TechBuzr
Hackers are becoming the worst enemies of businesses the world over. They wreck a lot of havoc on websites, operations, and customers, which leads to considerable losses. White hat hacking, the act of hiring those with hacker skill sets to defend a business, is becoming more common because of this. Let’s explore what white hat hacking is, and the ways it can help your business.
Understanding white hat hacking
White hat hacking is any hacking activity that explores a computer system without any malicious intent of exploiting or compromising it. This definition often crosses with the term ethical hacking, which has the permission of companies for the purpose of testing their security.
A growing number of companies are collaborating with white hat hackers to deal with security issues. They may approach hacker groups for assistance, or directly hire them as part of their security teams. Several organizations, like the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, are providing Ethical Hacker training courses to help white hats prepare for these opportunities.
White hat hackers find site security issues
While you might put considerable effort into developing your site’s security, it is not going to be 100% safe. There will be some flaw that could eventually be exploited by malicious hackers. White hats will help you find these vulnerabilities and deal with them early using a method known as penetration testing, which simulates external and internal hacking attacks on your site or computer system. This video demonstrates how it should work.
The hacker might then be directly involved in developing solutions for these issues, or simply provide their suggestions.
Encouraging white hat hackers to help
Unless a business for security testing directly contracts them, independent white hat hackers are still legally liable for breaking into sites without permission. Companies address this concern by setting up a responsible disclosure policy. This policy governs how the independent hacker will conduct their tests and share their findings with the company, such as in this example.
https://twitter.com/openbugbounty/status/1047987523350396929
It serves as a signal that you are open to input from the white hat hacker community any time.
Another way that you can encourage white hats to test your system and provide useful information is by putting up a rewards program. The reward is often monetary and is publicly declared for the community’s benefit.
White hats help you improve overall site security
When working with white hat hackers, you can go beyond finding site vulnerabilities and enlist them to improve overall system security. Since they are familiar with the techniques of their black hat counterparts, they can predict how they could attack and how to prevent them.
The information they provide is useful for developing your overall security plan. Some of the areas this plan should cover are:
- General site design
- Strategies for dealing with cyber attacks
- Preventive measures
White hats will often work closely with your IT and HR teams to flesh out these details.
Improving site performance
Since white hat hackers are experienced programmers, they can also use their knowledge to improve your system’s overall design. For example, they may use DDoS attacks to test and demonstrate how well your site or network can handle increased traffic, great for testing before launching a viral campaign. They then look for ways of enhancing its capabilities.
Another activity that white hats delve into is bug hunting. They review your system code and look for portions that might cause errors in your site and provide fixes. To encourage them to participate in the hunt, you can put up a rewards system.
White hat hackers can help in product development
Outside of dealing with cybersecurity issues, white hat hackers can also be involved in product development. Software companies are their most common employers, but you can also find them lending their expertise to electronics manufacturers and even automakers. They pioneered an entire industry that even allows you to buy Instagram followers.
Most independent white hats test products already released in the market to find exploits that manufacturers might have overlooked. A growing number of them are being employed by companies for product testing and refinement before release as well.
Developing new products
White hat hackers also channel their skills into coming up with new product ideas which are in fact, at the core of hacker culture. They are also involved in the development of open source software, which has benefited both large and small businesses.
Many companies like Google and Facebook encourage such development through hackathons. These events let hackers freely develop and showcase their product ideas to their peers and the public.
Google Analytics Hackathon in London
Many of these hackathon ideas are eventually picked up by businesses and further developed into actual products.
White hat hackers help employees be security-conscious
Outside of technical matters like system design, there is also a human factor in the cybersecurity that you need to deal with. Even a simple employee mistake might leave your entire site vulnerable to attacks.
Inviting white hat hackers to host cyber security seminars is a way to combat this. They will be able to teach your personnel how to identify the signs of cyber attacks and how to act on them. The hacker can also give pointers on how they can manage any data they have related to the business.
Developing better security protocols
Another significant aspect of getting white hats as teachers is that they know the various psychological tactics used by malicious hackers to dupe people, such as these.
Watch this hacker break into a company
These tactics can be used against your employees and get them to provide an opening to your site unknowingly. This is essential as you can’t just hope that your team watches Mr. Robot and learns from the mistakes employees make on that show.
By teaming with white hats, your human resources department can develop better security protocols to be followed by employees. These include creating access guidelines for sensitive data and building the management process for dealing with breaches.
White hat hackers are cost-effective
Malicious hacking and other cyber crimes are known to cause significant financial damages. Experts predict that these losses could amount to as much as $6 trillion annually by 2021 if left unchecked.
White hat hackers have become important partners in lessening these losses. Since they proactively look for vulnerabilities, they are able to alert you about these issues long before they can be exploited. This gives you plenty of time to fix these exploits and set up other preventive measures. The money you spend on these early fixes will be considerably less than what you would have to spend dealing with future damages. Here are white hat hackers showing Jeep, and their owners, a vulnerability that never should’ve made it to market:
Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on a Highway
This idea also works when it comes to mitigating losses that come from product issues. White hat hackers could serve as an additional layer in your product testing. Some of them even go beyond regular customer testing to satisfy their curiosity. The information these tests provide is useful for making product improvements.
White hat hackers can boost customer confidence
White hat hackers can also influence customer perception about your website. They often share their findings on public forums, like GitHub, which are accessible to consumers. These findings affect their decision to purchase your services. Since the findings are passed to other consumers, you get a positive perception built around your company’s security issues.
You can leverage this by encouraging white hats to test and review your website actively. Work closely with them to ensure that you are indeed able to protect customer data. You can then use their findings to entice customers with the assurance that you’ll protect them.
White hat hackers help improve your business strategy
With their knowledge of system programming and site development, white hat hackers can ultimately play a bigger consultative role in your business. Their most obvious work would be with your IT department, managing your information systems. They could also be part of your business planning team and help develop improvements to your production and product delivery processes.
Competitor research is another area of businesses strategy development where white hats could have a role. They can study competitor sites to see how they respond to cybersecurity issues, and how they perform overall. The information they get can be used for improving your own operations.
Boost your business with white hat hackers
White hats have proven that computer hacking is not always a threat to fear. These ethical hackers can provide these benefits to your business:
- Better website security: White hats use their hacking knowledge not only to expose potential security issues on your site but also find ways to strengthen its protection.
- Improved products and services: White hats are experts at developing new product ideas that you can take advantage of.
- More knowledgeable personnel: Your employees will learn a lot of things about cybersecurity and personal data security from these experts.
- Greater savings: White hat hackers will help you cut down on losses caused by security issues by resolving these concerns early.
- Greater customer confidence: The work done by white hats will assure customers that you are able to protect their data and deliver services without a hitch.
These benefits all come together to give your business a big advantage, and the should be enough reason for you to start reaching out to and collaborating with white hat hackers.
