The events of 9/11, especially the attack on the World Trade Center, shook up the entire world. One of the fallouts was how to prevent similar attacks on the cyber battlefield. It led to the formation of the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants or EC-Council. It wanted to enable the information security community with tools and resources to thwart such an attack and avert a cyber-conflict, should the need arise.
The first step towards this direction was launching the Information Security Program, the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). Today EC-Council is the world’s largest cyber-security education and training nonprofit, building various standards, training programs, certifications in the electronic commerce and information security space. CEH is gaining the support of top researchers and subject matter experts.
About the CEH Certification
Requirements and details of CEH certification: applicable for all above 18 years are:
- Become CEH-certified after passing a 125 multiple choice questions examination, accredited by the American National Standards Institute referred to CEH (ANSI) examination.
- The examination could be in-person at a Pearson VUE testing center or online.
- Some of the examination topics include Information security and ethical hacking overview, Reconnaissance techniques, System hacking phases, and attack techniques, Network and perimeter hacking, Web application hacking, Wireless network hacking, Mobile platform, IoT, and OT hacking, Cloud computing, and Cryptography.
- The time given for this examination is 4 hours.
- Work experience for two or more years in ethical hacking or an EC-Council-approved CEH training course with its training partners who can provide in-person courses in an academic or corporate context.
- Take live online courses to help with the topics.
- Get access to study guides and books on the topics.
- Get a CEH Master status by taking the CEH practical examination involving 20 challenges on a live network of virtual machines.
- The time given for this examination is 6 hours.
- This examination is taken in the EC-Council’s iLabs Cyber Range, which is a virtualized environment accessed from one’s home in the personal browser.
- The CEH Practical examination includes topics like Port scanning tools (e.g., Hping, Nmap), attacks on a system (e.g., DoS, DDoS, SQL injection, session hijacking, wireless threats, web server, and web application attacks), Vulnerability detection, Web application security tools (e.g., Acunetix WVS), SQL injection methodology and evasion techniques, SQL injection detection tools (e.g., IBM Security AppScan), and Communication protocols.
- Cost for the examinations vary and could change beyond the US$100 application fees, so EC-Council updates can guide one when ready to take any of the two examinations.
Career Options After Getting the CEH Certification
Ethical hackers are more in demand today, so CEH can be a good starting point in becoming a skilled security analyst in penetration testing/ethical hacking. The following career options can get a boost with an ethical hacker certification:
- Security Analyst or Security administrator
- Assurance Security officer
- Security Manager or Security Specialist
- Systems Security Engineer or Security Manager
- Security Professional or Security Officers
- Security Auditors
- Risk/threat/vulnerability Analyst
- System Administrators
- Network Administrators and Engineers
Expected Salary with CEH Certification
This certification can give a big upward salary jump to the professionals by helping them learn about the latest hacking tools, techniques, and practices used by ethical hackers and cyber security experts to hack enterprise systems. The salary range in US$ is between 45,000 to 128,000 depending upon experience and level of certification.
Conclusion
In conclusion, with an ethical hacker certification, one not only gets the ability to find bugs in codes. Find weaknesses in cyber defenses but also prevents potential victims by warning them in time. Thus, the insights gained are meaningfully and ethically implemented to improve security measures in an academic or corporate setting.
More and more companies agree that it’s better to have in-house hackers probing their defenses for weaknesses and encourage freelance ethical hackers.
This certification, therefore, can help with job search and make your application stand out even if it does not guarantee. So, EC-Council does make the term hacker more respectable and reassuring at the same time.
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