Table of Contents
- Introduction
- White Hat vs. Black Hat Hackers
- Roles and Responsibilities of Ethical Hacker
- How can you become a certified ethical hacker?
- Eligibility
- How do I train for the CEH certification?
- Related Resources
Check Out the Roles and Responsibilities of an Ethical Hacker
- Tuan Yang
- July 08, 2025
- Security
- 5 min read
Introduction
An ethical hacker is a professional hacker conducting penetration testing on company software and hardware. Ethical hackers only look for vulnerabilities when permissible for them to do so.
Ethical hackers are commonly known as white hat hackers. They conduct research using open source software or software/systems they own or have been allowed to study, such as goods and services, providing bug bounty programs. Such programs compensate individuals for revealing security weaknesses. Their forte is limited to lawful hacking into a company’s hardware or software, distinguishing them from black hat hackers.
Before we proceed further and check out the ethical hacker roles and responsibilities, let’s see the difference between white hat and black hat hackers.
| Ethical Hacking Courses for Your Team |
| EC-Council CEH: Certified Ethical Hacker V12 |
White Hat vs. Black Hat Hackers
White Hat Hackers |
Black Hat Hackers |
|
Hack with good intentions to help businesses protect their IT resources. |
Harm businesses using the wrong means |
|
Legal |
Illegal |
|
Gain access to systems with the owner's approval. Government agencies and other companies use white hat hackers to test software/devices and conduct non-harmful cyber assaults to identify security flaws |
Penetrate and control websites, devices or other systems without the owner's authorization or consent |
|
Create malware detection and removal software, tools, and strategies |
Build malware detection tools to compromise devices, servers, and websites |
|
Assist businesses in securing critical data by fortifying their cyber defenses |
Steal private data for cybercrime use or sell to other attackers on the dark web |
Roles and Responsibilities of Ethical Hacker
Companies usually employ ethical hackers to conduct a penetration test on their hardware and software so that their data isn't compromised during any breaches. Apart from testing, here are the ethical hacking job roles within an organization, such as:
- Cybersecurity analyst
- Information security analyst
- Intrusion detection analyst
- IT security engineer
- IT security administrator
- Network security analyst
- Penetration tester
How can you become a certified ethical hacker?
Now when you understand the role of ethical hacker, you might want to go ahead with the CEH certification. EC-Council's ethical hacking course will help you learn and understand cyber and network threats. You can earn the certified ethical hacker (CEH) certification by:
- Demonstrating knowledge of computer systems’ security
- Looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in target systems, using the same knowledge and tools as a malicious hacker, but lawfully and legitimately to assess the security posture of a target system
The 312-50 exam is a prerequisite for the CEH (Practical). The CEH (Practical) is a lab exam that assesses your penetration testing skills and the ability to apply related tools to compromise various simulated systems within a virtual environment.
Eligibility
To become an ethical hacker, you must be any of the following:
- Network security officer and practitioner
- Site administrator
- IS/IT specialist and analyst
- IS/IT auditor
- IT operations manager
- IT security officer
- Network specialist
- Technical support engineer
- Senior systems engineer
- Systems analyst
You must also have a bachelor's or master's degree in a related field, such as computer programming, computer science, information security, or information technology.
How do I train for the CEH certification?
The EC- Council certification exam validates your knowledge and expertise of cybersecurity or specializations within the cybersecurity domain. You can also learn from independent websites, such as NetCom Learning. NetCom offers expert training and easy guides for the certification exam.
The role of ethical hacker can be better understood with the CEH training. It is equally important to know what’s new in EC-Council CEH v12.
NetCom's Certified Ethical Hacker v13 training course will help you ace the 312-50 exam. The course includes official CEH V12 courseware, iLabs for six months, and a certification exam voucher. This on-demand course will help you understand various ethical hacking tactics, techniques, and tools.
Gain the core skills of managing, designing, safeguarding, and implementing cybersecurity technology systems with our free on-demand CEH v12 course. Watch Now
