How to Hack Your Way to a Career in Cyber Security

Now that so much of our time can be spent online, and with shopping on the internet increasing year on year, the costs of cyber crime are rising. Carry on reading to find out how you can help fight cyber crime by studying an ethical hacking course.

What is ethical hacking? How can hacking be ethical?

Ethical hacking is a term first created by IBM to describe the broad practice of IT security testing. In ethical hacking courses you will learn the techniques hackers use to penetrate websites and IT systems in an effort to prevent attacks.

Ethical hacking courses also cover other practices that hackers use to infiltrate systems such as spam emails (phishing) and even searching through peoples rubbish to find out personal details!
Cyber crime in the news

Recently the news has been swamped with stories of big corporations and government websites being hacked. If you subscribe to the Playstation Network you may have experienced this first hand. Criminal hackers, known as “black hats” target websites for a number of reasons, usually any of the following:

To obtain private data, such as emails, addresses and payment information for profit
To show off their skills and get noticed
To demonstrate to corporations and governments how easy it is to hack into their sites and systems.

Due to our dependency on technology, and the internet (cyber space) countries are very concerned with cyber security. The UK established the The Office of Cyber Security & Information Assurance (OCSIA) to counteract cyber crime. The OCSIA offer some interesting internet statistics:

In 15 years the number of global web users has risen from 16 million (1995) to 1.7 billion users today.
In August 2010 British shoppers spent £4.4 billion online.
Cyber-crime costs billions per year globally

These statistics mean that business and governments take cyber-crime and cyber security very seriously. As a result jobs and careers in this field are on the rise, and in turn universities are offering courses to provide graduates for these job positions.

Become a cyber crime fighter

“There is rapidly-growing demand for security and digital forensic skills in the finance, energy and retail sectors. Graduates from this new Masters program will be in demand as security consultants, network architects and engineers, and digital forensics investigators.”
Professor Bill Buchanan (Director of Edinburgh Napier’s Centre for Distributed Computing and Security), on Edinburgh Napier’s Advanced Security and Digital Forensics MSc.

If you want a career in cyber security you should consider a course in ethical hacking, ethical hackers, known as “white hats” test websites and systems for security flaws by employing a number of the techniques used by black hat hackers.

You will be taught the fundamentals of computing, including databases, networking and programming, and apply those skills to ethical hacking.
Start your journey to becoming a cyber crime fighter by following some of our tips.

Find out which universities offer courses in cyber security. We will help you get started below.
Research the facilities available. It is important that the university you chose has access to the most up to date technology to ensure that your ethical hacking skills are in line with current black hat techniques.
Enquire into what modules are included in the course. If you want a course more focused on programming ensure it contains enough programming modules to satisfy you.

Where can I find ethical hacking courses?

You can find courses in ethical hacking and cyber security at the following links:

To find out more about studying IT and Computing, have a look at our Computer Programming Degree Guide and our Web Development Degree Guide.