When you hear the word hacking, it can sound like criminal activity, illegal and immoral, but there is a profession called ethical hacking which is quite opposite to what hackers do.
As you can learn from the word ethical hacking means hacking systems for ethical purposes.
This career option is growing and getting popular exponentially in the recent years due to increasing number of security and cyber attacks and
Confidential data getting stolen from not just small but many national and multinational companies and government organisations and institutions.
And if you are in your 12th and confused regarding which career option you should choose or should you go for Ethical hacking or not as your career.
You don’t need to worry about it anymore.
So in this article let’s take a look at what ethical hacking is all about and is ethical hacking a good career option or not by observing some main advantages and disadvantages of this profession.
So let’s get started.
Table of Contents
pros and cons of ethical hacking
Pros of ethical hacking
1. Learn various hacking techniques
The main advantage of choosing ethical hacking as a career option is with this option you can learn various hacking techniques.
But before that you as an ethical hacker should get into a mindset of a hacker so that you can understand what is the hacking technique that the hackers would use in order to steal the information and data from the computer.
By learning various hacking techniques that hackers use in order to bypass the system and steal the data you can developed good skills in your skill set and
become one of the most valuable assets for the company, probably even more valuable than the employees itself.
2. Improves the security
Another big benefit of ethical hacking as a career option is that you can work to improve the security of the company and its system.
As a ethical hacker you will be looking for all the loopholes in a system which the hackers can leverage and you will be upgrading the systems &
the technology so that there will be no room for the hackers to bypass the system by removing all the vulnerabilities in the system and prevent any security breach in future.
By these methods of upgrading the technology by the ethical hacker your system will not only be secured for the attacks of today but also of the future.
Because of this reason the ethical hackers can be a key asset for many banks because they prevent false transactions and hackers from stealing the data at the same time,
ethical hackers can also be important for many companies which work online so that they can find and solve all the vulnerabilities and
weak points in a system so that they can prevent hackers from stealing the important data of their customers like accounts, passwords and credit card information, etc.
3. Creative profession
Another big advantage of this career option is that it is a creative profession which means that you need to use your creativity and problem solving skills and
look for various methods of how the hackers can get into the system using different methods and loopholes and you need to discover all those loopholes keeping yourself in the shoes of the hacker.
During this process you can learn a lot of things because of this reason this is also an exciting career option.
4. Flexibility of work
Another big benefit of ethical hacking as a career option is that you can work from anywhere in the world.
You don’t need to move or stay present in a physical office in order to work. All you need is a computer and internet connection and access to the system of the company along with some online tools in order to start working.
Because of this you can work from any part of the world and you can save a lot of time and spend your time with your family and children instead of moving to the office which can save a lot of your energy, money and time.
5. Job satisfaction
This is another good advantage of ethical hacking as a career.
You can have good job satisfaction and a meaningful career.
Whenever any hacker attacks and steals data and information like bank details and account passwords or any other confidential information it can seriously damage the company in terms of growth and revenue.
But thankfully with your work, the company can work on protecting that important data of their customers and employees and
You can have immense satisfaction when you realise that your work adds a great impact on the lives of others by helping them protect their data from getting into the wrong hands.
And if you are happy with your job at the end of the day there is nothing better than that.
6. Good pay & high demand
According to bureau of labour statistics the average earning of ethical hacker is 103000 USD per year which converts into 50 dollars per hour.
Apart from that this job has 33% growth according to the same report in 2020-2030 timeline.
You can also work as a freelancer online if you hate being an employee.
The reason for so much high demand for ethical hackers and faster job growth is because we all know that data and information are the new valuable things, probably even more valuable than gold and diamond in the 21st century.
Because of this reason, whenever there is a cyber attack that happens in a company, the company experiences huge losses in revenue with an average of 200000$.
This is a huge loss of revenue for the company at the same time the credibility and reputation of the company will also get affected among the people.
And the problem with that is,
Every 39 seconds, there is a new attack somewhere on the Web. That is about 2,244 attacks that happen on the internet daily! That’s how many cyber attacks happen per day.
Every company wants to protect their data from hackers in that case the best people to help are ethical hackers because of this reason,
The growth rate is 33% which is faster than the average of 7% growth which is normally seen in many jobs and according to a report more than 3.5 million jobs will be created in the cyber security field by 2021 globally.
Most of these jobs are unfilled which means that this is also a low competition career option.
These are all the advantages of ethical hacking.
Cons of ethical hacking
1. Disclose information
When you work with professional hackers, they’ll require varying levels of access to your data, and in some instances,
they’ll need full access to your systems in order to find all the weak points and get a bird’s eye view of your network.
Unfortunately, there’s also a chance that your data will be leaked, either intentionally or unintentionally.
But these things can be avoided by creating a contract on paper and discussing about the tools and strategies that the person would use to look for vulnerabilities and
most importantly, you should only work with most trusted cyber security companies who have good portfolio and reliable people, you can check best cyber security companies here.
This is a disadvantage from the point of view of the company when using the ethical hacker help.
2. AI can be a problem
When it comes to drawbacks of ethical hacking, AI can be an issue.
As a matter of fact, by 2055 half of the jobs we humans can do would get replaced by AI and as per a report, by 2030, a big chunk of the tasks of cyber security could be replaced by AI.
And as per many websites surveys, the automation risk of ethical hacking profession is close to 50%.
But I believe, AI can’t completely replace the cybersecurity and it can’t beat human intelligence, experience, expertise and
creative thinking but it can definitely create problems for those who are in this career by replacing the majority of tasks with many online tools.
3. Work load
The last disadvantage of ethical hacking as a career option is that.
You can have a lot of workload on yourself, the majority of the ethical hackers work more than 40 hours per week.
At the same time because most of your work is done on the computer it can also lead to many other health problems like back pain, eye strains, fingers pain, stiffness, obesity, and many more health related problems.
These are all the pros and cons of ethical hacking as a career option.
Is ethical hacking a good career?
After learning all the advantages and disadvantages of ethical hacking, if you still want to know, is ethical hacking a good career?
My answer would be absolutely 100% yes!
Ethical hacking just like any other career has its own pros and cons which you have learnt earlier and it can be a good career for people if,
- You are a competitive person
- You are a creative person
- You want to choose a career which has a high level of job satisfaction and happiness
- You are interested and have knowledge in computers and coding languages
- You want to choose high paying low competition career
In all these cases, ethical hacking is a good career option.
With that said let’s conclude the blog post.
Conclusion
These are all the things you need to know about ethical hacking as a career option.
Do let me know your thoughts about ethical hacking in the comment section below.
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