edX: Try It: Ethical Hacking

This is a self-paced, free introductory course on ethical hacking — or, as it’s sometimes called, white hat hacking. Ethical hackers are the guardians of organizations, whose purpose is to identify vulnerabilities within an organization's systems. By exploiting these weaknesses, they provide invaluable insights to help organizations fortify their defenses and prevent cyber attacks. Ethical hackers simulate real-world scenarios to evaluate an organization's security posture and may use the same technical tools as cyber criminals, or unethical hackers, but rest assured every step of their work is completely legal and serves a greater purpose. By understanding the methods and mindset of cyber criminals, ethical hackers possess a unique perspective that enables them to proactively identify and address potential risks.

As an aspiring ethical hacker, whose goal is to fight cyber criminals, you will first and foremost need to learn how to behave and operate like an ethical cybersecurity professional. In this free course, you’ll start out with basics, such as:

• Cyber kill chain methodology
• Hacking concepts
• Hacker classes

You will gain hands-on experience in identifying vulnerabilities and analyzing their impact, and learn to think like a hacker to develop the skills necessary to safeguard organizations from malicious threats, keeping in mind, however, that your intentions in using these in the future will be to help rather than harm.

There are many career options available for an ethical hacker:

• Penetration tester
• Security consultant
• Security analyst
• Incident responder
• Cybersecurity engineer
• Vulnerability assessor
• Security researcher
• Security architect