How Much Do Ethical Hackers Earn?
Ethical hacking offers prosperous career opportunities to certified experts in the market. It is a demanding job that rewards well, provides a sense of accomplishment, and never gets boring or dull. Today, thinking about a career in ethical hacking is a great option. You must also go through the article if you consider the same profession. This article will help you to know more about the ethical hacking job, its requirements, responsibilities, and the rewards that it pays. It is a guide that will lead you to a prosperous career as an Ethical Hacker.
About Ethical Hackers
Hacking is a process of identifying system vulnerabilities to access the device unauthorizedly. The motive behind the process is to conduct malicious activities right from removing the systems profile to stealing the confidential information of the organization. This makes hacking illegal in the country. If caught in the act of hacking, an individual might be sentenced to years of jail.
However, if done with proper permission and the right intention, hacking is considered legal. Companies hire tech experts to carry out the hacking process on their systems in order to identify the bugs and vulnerable endpoints that might lead to unauthorized hacking. It is a protective measure that enables the companies to fight against the real hackers who have malicious intentions. Such individuals, who break into the devices and hack them with permission, are known as Ethical Hackers. Also, such hacking, without mischief, is called Ethical Hacking.
Required Skills Set and Qualification
There is a list of requisite skills to be an ethical hacker. These skills are the stepping stones for the top-tier positions that are reserved for the ethical hackers in the company. However, along with the required skills set, an individual must also appear in the CEH examination, i.e., the Certified Ethical Hacker exam.
Skill Sets:
For a prosperous career as an ethical hacker, an individual must be good at handling the database, operating system, and networks. Other skills that an ethical hacker must possess are:
- Soft skills for better communication
- Traffic sniffing
- SQL injection
- Password cracking
- Exploit vulnerabilities
- Snooping
- Hijacking
- Creative thinker
- Computer language skills
- Conceptual Knowledge
Certification:
Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) is a highly recognized training program that helps the individual learn about the public code of ethics that is much needed for all the hacking phases. This certification examination prepares the individuals well for the professional market by educating them about the latest tools, techniques, and methodologies that an unlawful hacker might use. Along with this, it teaches the individual ways to face various hacking challenges and attacks.
Duty of an Ethical Hacker: Roles and Responsibilities
The certified ethical hacker job is much more than just performing the penetration testing of the organization’s systems and applications. The experts are responsible for multiple tasks. Some of the key roles and responsibilities of an ethical hacker are:
- Suggest effective ways to strengthen the current security situation of the organization.
- Integrate with the software developers or security experts to advise safety criteria and provide them with better recommendations.
- Educate other personnel about various destructive cyber traps.
- Perform a scan of open and closed ports with the help of reconnaissance tools.
- Analyze patch releases by carrying out extensive vulnerabilities analysis.
- Try evading IDS, IPS, firewalls, and honeypots and fixing the drawbacks.
The roles and responsibilities of ethical hackers replicate the work of unauthorized hackers. Both try to gain access to the organization’s devices and information. However, ethical hackers work lawfully and with correct intentions. Their job is to ensure that the company keeps itself safe from malicious and unlawful hacking circumstances.
A career as an Ethical Hacker
The rise in the number of computer hacking cases has contributed significantly to the vacancies for ethical hackers. Now, every renowned business, financial institution, as well as government organization is required to recruit an ethical hacker to safeguard their sensitive data and information. Adding them to the IT team helps organizations identify potential vulnerabilities and get the right protection. However, the rising demand for ethical hackers is unmatched by the supply of experts. This makes the career as an Ethical Hacker a desired and promising prospect.
Multiple job roles are available for the individual after completing the CEH examination. This certificate examination is a step ahead for a wide range of higher positions in an organization. Even the top IT companies like Wipro, Reliance, Google, Infosys, etc., keep some positions vacant for ethical hackers. The certified ethical hacker job role varies as per the specialization of the expert. Some are specialized in networks, some in the application, security, or forensics. The job roles that are kept reserved for the CEH experts are:
- Security Expert
- Auditor
- Vulnerability Checker
- Security Professional
- Hacking Tool Analyst
- Auditor
- Site Administrator
- Security Analyst
- Forensics Computer Analyst
- Penetration Tester
How Much Does an Ethical Hacker Earn?
The average certified ethical hacker salary varies with multiple factors. Some of the prominent factors are the location of the job, the position of the hacker, the organization, as well as the experience of the expert. These factors impact the salary, and thus, there is a long list of the pay scale of an ethical hacker. The salary that an ethical hacker gets as per different factors is as follows.
As per the Experience:
For an Entry Level expert with 0-5 yrs of experience, the salary is approx. $50,000 – $100,000. However, for a Junior Level professional with 5-10 yrs of experience, the salary is $100,000 – $120,000, and a Senior Level expert with more than 10 yrs of experience is paid $120,000 or more. An ethical hacker is required to pass the Certified Ethical Hacker exam to get a hike of 9-10% in the pay scale,
Based on Location:
Multiple surveys proved that different locations pay differently to their ethical hackers. Metropolitan cities or highly developed cities pay more for the same respectable hacking job as compared to the less developed cities. The salary might vary a lot with the cities. For instance, California pays its ethical hackers $103,469. On the other hand, Maryland rewards its hackers with $93,768.
According to Job Title:
A certified ethical hacker’s job role varies as per his field of specialization. This also results in a varying pay scale. Different job roles of certified ethical hackers reward differently to the experts. Some of the vital examples are Cyber Security Analyst gets $118,991, including bonuses as a reward for the service. However, the Penetration Tester is paid $127,714, Information Security Manager is paid $153,163, and Security Engineer is paid $132,536.
Become a Certified Ethical Hacker with Infosec Train
Infosec Train offers a comprehensive Certified Ethical Hacker training program that will help you to learn the skills to identify the vulnerabilities within an organization’s security posture and efficiently prevent the damage caused by complex cyberattacks.
Get yourself enrolled in our CEH V11 Certification training program and forge a promising career in the field of ethical hacking.
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