BENGALURU: What if we told you there are courses out there that would teach you how to hack? And no, you wouldn’t get into trouble for it. Ethical hacking, also known as ‘penetration testing’ or simply ‘pen testing’, is acquiring a big role now since it can act as a possible tool to prevent the breach of confidentiality or information leak in large organisations.
As opportunities in the field of ethical hacking boom in the country, courses that equip people with adequate training to pursue it as a career seem to be on the rise too. National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), in a survey conducted in 2015, estimated a requirement of at least one million ethical hackers in India against the existing 50,000 professional hackers at the time.
To meet this demand of qualified employees in the field of cyber security, Jetking, a pan-India computer networking institute, recently launched a new Networking and Ethical Hacking course in all its Bengaluru centres. “The programme is designed to cater to all students, including those who do not have a technology background. They first undergo basic training on computer hardware systems. The qualification requirement for the course is high school,” Siddharth Bharwani, head of marketing, Jetking, said.
Akshay Jain, (23), a software engineer-turned-security researcher at Appknox, echoed the point that one does not need to be a graduate to work as an ethical hacker. “Prior knowledge in computers does give you an edge, but it’s mostly about one’s interest. If someone likes coding, they can definitely pursue ethical hacking,” he told CE.
In the eight-month programme comprising 694 hours, students would be taught computer hardware operating systems followed with linux (an operating system managing hardware resources) and server, as well as the fundamental concepts of cloud security. Additionally, the course focuses on understanding the workings of a hacker’s mind through subjects like network scanning techniques and countermeasures, enumeration techniques and countermeasures, cloud computing threats, attacks, security techniques and tools, cryptography and system hacking.
Applications for the course, which costs `96,000, can be submitted till May 31. The course will make them eligible for placements at companies and organisations that handle complex databases and require high levels of confidentiality. Hackers are hired to identify potential risks to the operating networks.