Penetration Tester

Penetration tester jobs require you to essentially act like a hacker and hack into your organization’s resources. If you were wondering “what is ethical hacking”, it is just this – ethical application of hacking skills. The purpose is to simulate a real hack and cyber security penetration testing is a safer way for organizations to gauge their security than to wait for a real-time hack. On a more granular level, pen testers identify security vulnerabilities in an organization’s digital and physical systems and policies.

Penetration testers and ethical hackers use a combination of their work experience and ethical hacking skills that they have acquired to help land their first job in this role. The good thing is that you can learn various skills involved in penetration testing online for free.

Whether your career path will require education is more a function of the job you are applying for than anything else. Some organizations hiring for the role of penetration tester or ethical tester do not have any education requirements, in which case certification is all you need. Other organizations do have an education requirement, so you will need both a degree and certification. For those that do require a degree, there is no one degree they require - whether it be the level of degree or the major.

The top certification, and the only one that you can say you need with firm veracity is the Certified Ethical Hacker cert offered by EC-Council. This cert is the standard and is recognized across multiple industries, so chances are that organization is looking for it. Below are some other certifications that you may want to look into:

• Certified Penetration Tester by Infosec Institute
• CompTIA PenTest+
• GIAC Penetration Tester
• Certified Expert Penetration Tester by Infosec Institute
• EC-Council Licensed Penetration Tester Master

Mastering these skills and improving your penetration testing skills is the name of the game when it comes to keeping up with the most up-to-date ethical hacking. The skills you will need as a pen tester are:

• Coding skills in multiple languages to penetrate organizational systems and networks
• Comprehensive information security knowledge
• Computer forensics and system analysis
• Understanding how breaches affect your organization
• Being a clear communicator
• Understanding the human factor
• Being able to plan and create penetration tests
• The ability to test, test, test because that will be much of your day-to-day work

According to PayScale, the average salary for an ethical hacker/pen tester is $70,096. Those that are at the mid-career level make well over $100,000 per year with the top 10% of ethical hackers earning $149,000. The certified ethical hacker certification will be arguably more than those without a cert, but there is no data specifically on how much that cert will boost your earning level.

One thing about working as a pentester is the wide variety of industries that are looking for penetration testers to test an organization’s security. Below is a sampling of the industries that typically hire pen testers:

• Financial services
• Healthcare
• Government
• Tech
• Enterprise