Cyber attacks on the rise

By Geeta Singh

One fine morning Company X discovers that their IT systems have been hacked. The company’s financial results have been leaked to the media; business plans have been compromised; employees' personal files have been posted on the internet.

Result: The market loses confidence in the organisation and the share prices take a nose dive.

Recently, the website of a renowned university was hacked multiple times by an Ethical Hacker. The site had multiple flaws on its server.

Reasons: They did not have adequate security for their IT assets and documents.

Governments, defence organisations, MNCs, financial institutions, hospitals, private businesses etc. have a great deal of confidential information about their customers, employees, designs, products, research and financial status. All this information is now collected, processed and stored on computers and transmitted across networks to other computers.

Imagine if confidential information about a business' customers or finances or new product line fall into the hands of a competitor or a black hat (Hacker), a business and its customers could suffer widespread, irreparable financial loss, not to mention damage to the company's reputation.

Information security is not an 'IT problem', it is a business concern today.

Solution: Every organisation, be it small or big needs to have the best of IT security. This is not in terms of hardware and software alone but also to have the best of IT security professionals, namely the Ethical hackers. It would become mandatory for organisations to have ethical hackers in the near future.

Ethical hackers, today, are an asset for any organisation. They are being hired by organisations in big numbers across the globe. They acquire the certifications from world’s leading certifying bodies. The leading one’s are the EC Council and SANS. EC Council certifies people on CEH V8, ECSA V8, CHFI V 8, ECSP .Net. These certifications are recognised and carry lot of value today. EC Council has over 90 ATCs (Accredited Training Centres) in India.

About the author:

Geeta Singh is the founder of QUIK (Quest Institute Of Knowledge), one of the leading ATCs in South Asia, training and certifying students. She is an experienced trainer and her institute has won many awards from EC Council. They have certified over 700 students. They help students with job placement in IT security domain.