Setting Goals

 

Setting Goals 

You need to establish your own hacking goals by discovering your own system’s vulnerabilities in order to establish enough security to protect them from attacks. Since you are going against a very sneaky enemy, you need to establish very specific goals and schedules on when you can start hacking your own system.

Important Note: Keep in mind that before you create a plan, you need to make sure that you have all the credentials for testing systems. Also see to it that you document ethical hack and system that you tested on, and provide a copy of documentation to the management. This will make sure that you have the protection that you need just in any case you discover that a system is compromised or when something unexpected happens in your investigation.

If you are testing your own system, documenting everything, including all the software peripheries that you have tested and the type of tests you performed, is a must. This will ensure that you have followed all the steps correctly, and if you need to retrace your steps, you have an idea on where you should get back to.

Once you are able to follow every security protocol necessary, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What kind of information in your system should you protect the most?

You need to determine that what part of your system is the most vital to you. If you are holding a database of personal information or a file of an important project that many would like to get their hands on, then it makes sense that you protect those files first.

2. What’s your budget for ethical hacking?

While there are numerous free tools online that will allow you to perform tests and hacks, the amount of time, money, and effort that you can spend on your hacks will determine what kinds of tools you can use to safeguard your systems and research potential vulnerabilities. With this in mind, you get the idea that if you value time and effort, you need to have the right budget to purchase top-of-the-line ethical hacker tools

3. What do you want to get out of your hacking tests?

If you are hired as an ethical hacker by an organization, you need to determine what kind of justification you should present the management in order to achieve the best possible results out of your research.