What is the difference between cybersecurity vs ethical hacking? And what does each one of them mean?
If you want to know, keep on reading.
What is Cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is the use of both tools and skills to give the best security to users. Its main goal? To secure all digital assets and data from any cyber threats from the internet.
Cybersecurity has four phases. These should be in order:
- Identifying all cyber risks present
- Protecting all system by installing security measures
- Detecting cyber incidents
- Reacting well and fast to incidents
Following all these four will keep all data safe. And cybersecurity experts are the ones who will need to do these.
What is Ethical Hacking?
Ethical hacking is done when companies want to release a new app or website. Or if they want to make sure their security systems are robust.
How? By doing an intentional security breach or hack. Doing so will let companies see if their current security can protect their system.
If not, then they can see where the vulnerability is. Then, find solutions to it. Because of this, ethical hacking falls under cybersecurity.
So, cybersecurity experts can also do ethical hacking. The people with this focus can also be called penetration testers. Or white hat hackers.
But people that work with cybercriminals are black hat hackers. These are the ones with ill-intention. While gray hat hackers can work with both sides.
Cybersecurity vs Ethical Hacking
Now, we will talk about how each one differs from the other. As you can see, both have the same goal. To keep all digital assets secure.
But what sets them apart is, as said, ethical hacking is under cybersecurity. Why? Because the latter is a broad term. Thus, it has many sub-categories.
Aside from ethical hacking, it has digital forensics, cloud security, and more. So, ethical hacking is the focus itself.
Further, cybersecurity experts will need to secure a network. But not all are ethical hackers. So, they do not always have to try and hack a system.
But that is what ethical hacking means. Their focus is to hack a system to find its vulnerability. Then, fix them.
But that is not all. Here are more differences:
Cybersecurity
- Goals. To secure systems and data from cyber-attacks. Also, to solve all security issues.
- Focus. To find ways how to secure the system.
- Duties. Includes making a system access privilege. Finding issues to secure the system. Doing regular maintenance. And keeping all systems up to date.
Ethical Hacking
- Goals. To spot vulnerabilities in a system. Then, report them to higher-ups.
- Focus. To find ways on how to attack a system.
- Duties. Includes hacking a system. Doing penetration testing. Finding vulnerabilities. Reporting how they did it. Doing regular tests. And keeping up to date with new threats and flaws.
In conclusion, cybersecurity is indeed different from ethical hacking. But both are important today.
So which one do you want to be? A cybersecurity expert? An ethical hacker? Or on to another cybersecurity focus?
