“Set a thief to catch a thief,” goes the old saying. In fact, some
former black-hat hackers have gone legit and built successful careers as
cybersecurity consultants. However, organizations do not need to depend
on reformed cybercriminals to improve their network security measures.
What organizations, their leaders and security teams do need to do is
learn to think like the enemy and test their systems by attacking them.
The military has traditionally assigned “red teams” to do just this:
probe for vulnerabilities in order to identify and correct them.
White Hats Challenge Cybersecurity Complacency
According to Roy Wenzl at Government Technology,
not all white-hat hackers are former cybercriminals. Many are serious
computer enthusiasts who are drawn to the challenge of breaking into
systems — not to steal or cause disruptions, but to help organizations
improve their cybersecurity measures.
In a variation on this theme, major technology organizations such as
Google regularly pay bounties to white hat hackers who identify
vulnerabilities in their code and systems.
Safely Navigating Toward a Safe Haven
However, bringing in outside consultants or rewarding freelance white
hats is not the only way organizations can learn to think like the
enemy.
For some organizations, this may mean setting up a full-blown
red-team operation devoted to challenging and testing the organization’s
security measures. All organizations can benefit from taking on the
white-hat role by looking at their systems the way an attacker would.
The white-hat thinking process has many of the elements of a game
(which is why so many hardcore computer gamers are drawn to the
cybersecurity profession). Organizations can capitalize on this by
emphasizing game-like features such as awarding points to work groups
that find vulnerabilities in code or identify files that should not be
readily available.
Another part of learning to think like the enemy is self-examination.
What would cyberthieves look to steal? Customer account information?
Proprietary technology secrets? What might rouse the ire of
ideologically motivated “hacktivists?”
Vulnerabilities are inevitable. The best way to identify and correct them is to start by actively looking for them.
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