What hacking is legal

It has become imperative now more than ever for companies and governments to legally hack into their operations to discover and fix vulnerabilities and prevent malicious and unlawful hacking from keeping the classified information safe.

The White Hat Hackers are those hackers who look for backdoors in the software when they are legally permitted to do so. They are hired by companies or organizations to hack into their computer system and notify the administration if their order has any vulnerabilities. This is done so that these organizations can further secure their networks. Software companies make use of such hackers and hacking processes.

There are many types of ethical hacking. A few of them are. Here are the most common hacking techniques used by hackers:. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Table of Contents. Author Recent Posts. Follow me.

Daniel Segun. When not writing, he's probably busy designing graphics or developing websites. Another situation when your ethical hacking endeavors become illegal and get you in trouble is when you decide to alter or destroy company data.

If you want to perform ethical hacking legally, once you succeed in breaking in, take a screenshot. Altering any data that might ground the system or compromise its integrity is illegal when performing ethical hacking and could lead to a lawsuit. Once you are in, is it legal to create backdoors, only known to you, that you can then use to access the system later?

Even if they gave you legal authorization to ethically hack their system and identify vulnerabilities that need to be fixed. Companies handle more sensitive personal user information that ever before in the history of civilization and this information must be protected.

So ethical hacking has to be legal because it is the only way ethical hackers can help companies put attackers in check. Because ethical hacking is legal, it attracts some of the most brilliant minds in tech with excellent problem solving skills to come and secure systems. It would then be hard for them to obtain sufficient training to stop a malicious hacker right in his tracks.

In the meantime, the malicious hackers continue to freely share the best attack vectors, tools and methods in the dark web. Guess what would happen once every government organization and big tech has been brought to their knees by the attackers? Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. The increase in the dissemination of data has led to a need to protect personal data from falling into the hands of malicious attackers. This has led to the creation of data protection laws and binding frameworks. Data is a valuable asset irrespective of who has access to it, i.

Data breaches come at a very expensive cost to organizations, leading to reputational damage, legal action, downtime, and reduction in customer loyalty and patronage. There is no limit to the effect of a data breach on affected individuals, some of which are humiliation, financial loss, physical or psychological damage, or threat to life.

Data privacy is a fundamental human right for data subjects owners of data , while it is a legal and moral obligation of organizations to their customers. Personal data is any information that can be used to identify an individual. This includes some types of personal data that are deemed sensitive. This type of data can be used to exploit, profile and discriminate against individuals.

It is the most sought type of data for enterprises and people with malicious intents. Everyone and all organizations are at risk. Having a smartwatch, Facebook profile, Instagram, and LinkedIn profile indicates that your personal information is being shared online and offline. Identifying specific platforms on which your data is shared can be difficult to trace. A data breach is deemed to have occurred when there is a security violation leading to confidential, sensitive, or protected data being exposed to an unauthorized person.

It indicates that there is a loss of control of a computer system or network as a result of a cyberattack which usually leads to fines. Cyberattack is one of the threats to data, and there are different types of it.

A cyberattack is a malicious and deliberate attempt by an individual or organization to breach the information system of another individual or organization. A cyberattack is also theft, exposure, alteration, and destruction of data through unauthorized access.

There are data protection laws and binding frameworks developed that help to ensure that data is protected. Different countries have different data protection laws, which is essential with privacy and security regulations, constantly evolving to match up with evolving data risks. Since data is highly sought after, there must be adequate security from the inception of the collection of data. The GDPR has a framework that can be used to ensure that data is protected from compromise, and if compromised, has little impact.

This guide ensures that when data is collected, it is limited and specific to the purpose of collection. Applying this will also ensure that there is a solid foundation for data protection measures. We talked earlier about the data protection principles that help provide a solid foundation for data collection. After collecting data, the next question that comes to mind is how we can protect data that has been collected. GDPR recommends that there should be a risk assessment for data collected.

This is essential for identifying the right security to protect personal data. In order to ensure that the appropriate security is in place for data, the following should be considered:. These questions should be answered for all types of data collected by organizations. A risk assessment may be required to be able to answer these questions. Identification of the appropriate security measure for protecting data will be a decision made by the information security, data protection team, and other relevant stakeholders.

Having an effective data security program does not end with designing and implementing one but also with having controls in place to ensure its effectiveness.