Experts Push for Ethical Hacking to Thwart Cybercrime

Information technology security experts have put forth a number of recommendations including the employment of so-called ethical hackers to thwart cybercriminals, who hide under the anonymity of the internet to wreak havoc to individuals and organizations, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.

An ethical hacker is a computer and network expert who attacks a security system on behalf of its owners, seeking vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could exploit.

According to the experts at this year’s conference on IT security tagged “Hackcess Technology Security” in Lagos, to test a security system, ethical hackers use the same methods as their less principled counterparts, but report problems instead of taking advantage of them.

Oluseyi Akindeinde, chief technical officer, Digital Encode, said that ethical hacking is all about helping to make the Internet safer.

This prevents identity theft and the leaking of vital information. When a company learns where security in their system is lacking, it allows them to implement stronger security measures.

Akindeinde said that “Hacker doesn’t break into networks one day, while they are attempting there are signs if you don’t understand how they work you won’t see those signs. Good people need to learn these skills to be able to use it to protect their organizations.

Apart from companies, ethical hacking is also beneficial to help government entities to protect major computer systems from being compromised in a way that national security would be an issue.

Tobechi Ndubuaku, chief operating officer, Tobeit Consulting, the organizers of the conference, however said that information security and identity management has been a challenge on the African IT community over the years.

“Globally today, we have continually been evaluating innovative protects on information security. There is no stop to this, as we go even further by deploying sophisticated ciphers and technology to check hackers’ intent to infiltrate our domain but the frequency and severity of these threats continue to be on the rise,” he said.

He stated that for IT security to be alive security managers need to be aware of the talents of hackers.

Adeola Kukoyi, Enterprise System Engineer- Security, Cisco corroborated Ndubuaku but added that organizations have acknowledged that its security policies are difficult to enforce because of changing business models.
 
According to him 60% of data are stolen in hours, 54% of breaches remains undiscovered for months and that 100% of companies connect to domains that host malicious files or services.

Elsewhere, Symantec internet security threat report 2014 released by ITU over the weekend says that 2013 was the year of mega breach our Internet Security Threat Report 17 reported 2011 as the Year of the Data Breach.

The year according to the report was extraordinary because in addition to increased cybercrime-driven breaches, Anonymous in acts of hactivism breached dozens of companies. With Anonymous less active, breach numbers returned to more predictable growth in 2012.

And then came 2013. If 2011 was the year of the breach, then 2013 can best be described as the Year of the Mega Breach.