Cyber attacks on big organisations and establishments have become particularly prevalent in this heavily digitally oriented era. Writing for ZDNet, Charlie Osborne offers a rundown of some of the most notable data hacks and breaches that have occurred in 2019. These include the moments when “the Disney+ content streaming service was compromised and underground traders began offering accounts on hacking forums” and when “Adobe left the details of 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud customers on an unsecured database exposed online without authentication credentials…required for access.”

Incidents such as these are proof of why you, as a business owner, need to take the best security measures possible to ensure your company isn’t open to cyber attacks. There are actually numerous measures you can take, such as setting up a firewall, creating strong passwords, putting a limit on the number of login attempts to your website, installing security plugins if you can, and making use of HTTPS, a protocol that enables content to be delivered without being intercepted. You must also remember to update your security software on a regular basis, and strengthen the security of your internet connectivity solutions.

There is another means of keeping your company’s security intact, and that’s hiring an ethical hacker. Ethical hacking, also known as penetration testing, involves the simulation of a cyber attack on a company’s IT system in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of that company’s cybersecurity. An ethical hacker won’t fix those weaknesses for you, but they will make security recommendations based on their assessment. It’s up to you to choose what strategies and protocols you’d like to implement in order to protect your IT infrastructure.

Hiring an ethical hacker is an extremely beneficial move, not just for your internet solutions, but for your business in general. For one thing you could end up being a few steps ahead of the next hacker who might be coming your way. Ethical hackers discover what kind of vulnerabilities are lurking within your IT system, thereby providing you with a step towards countering those vulnerabilities with the appropriate security strategy. You might end up finding the exact means of defending your website, internet connectivity, or other elements of your IT infrastructure, before they are hacked.

Becoming attuned to the ins and outs of your IT system is crucial. This is due particularly, as the EC-Council Blog explains, to how “present-day cyberattacks are more sophisticated in nature than before” and how “it is difficult to detect the notorious activities of a hacker in the absence of an intelligent intrusion detection system”. This is where ethical hackers come in, adopting the strategies of malicious hackers in order to help your business “define detection rules which can eliminate the chances of various cyberattacks.” With the aid of an ethical hacker, you come closer to handling sophisticated data hacks more effectively.

But it’s not just your IT security that benefits from ethical hacking. It’s your company’s credibility as well. A data breach can cause great unease in the minds of your clients, customers and investors, both current and prospective, affecting the reputation of your company as a stable and responsible organisation. In September 2019 Forrester Consulting released a study it had conducted on behalf of cybersecurity organisation Bitsight, in which 38% of enterprises admitted to losing business as a result of real or perceived security issues. So, hire an ethical hacker, discover your IT system’s vulnerabilities, resolve those issues, and reduce the risk of a cyberattack and that could harm your credibility.

Lastly, many businesses are moving towards cloud-based operating systems as a means to create, store and collate important information. The transition does come with some risks. Writing for CSO Online, Shira Shamban explains that “valuable data now lives in cloud environments and hackers know that the security around the cloud is still iterating and optimizing. This makes corporate cloud environments irresistible targets for hackers.” So, if your business is in the process of moving to a cloud-based operating system, be sure to hire an ethical hacker in order to prevent any threats.

Ethical hacking is a valuable option when it comes to defending your company against cyberthreats, especially in an age when data hacks and breaches are so common. Added to that, hiring an ethical hacker can mean boosting the credibility of your company, making you look worthwhile to prospective customers or clients.