Penetration Testing Helps Protect Computer Networks From Cyber Attacks

By Author: EC-COUNCIL
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More and more information security attacks have emerged lately and may cost governments and organizations millions of dollars. The syndicated children's TV series "Zodiac Island" lost an entire season of the show due to a fired employee at its data-hosting company who hacked into networked computers and destroyed its work.
"Zodiac Island" is produced by Hawaii-based WER1 World Network, which signed up with Wisconsin-based ISP and data-hosting company, CyberLynk. The show has run on more than 100 U.S. TV stations around the country, including ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS affiliates.
Michael Scott Jewson, who was terminated from CyberLynk, allegedly accessed CyberLynk's data and intentionally wiped it out. Jewson is alleged to have been charged in February with a federal computer crime violation and admitted his guilt in a plea agreement.
He committed a data breach that allegedly knocked out 6,480 WER1 electronic files, or 300 gigabytes of data, comprising two years of work from hundreds of contributors globally, including animation artwork and live action video production.
WER1 says is impossible to reassemble ...
... or reproduce the lost data, which is said to include fragments from 14 episodes of Zodiac Island. WER1, but is now suing CyberLynk and Jewson for breach of contract, negligence, conversion, and computer fraud, although it says it got some restitution as a result of Jewson's plea agreement saying that the company breached its contractual promises to provide secure data hosting.
Companies can learn to protect and secure its computer network through pen testing and ethical hacking. Penetration testing has become an important process used to identify the security controls in the information system of an organization. Such testing is a specific type of assessment methodology in which assessors imitate the actions of an attacker by using known attacker’s techniques and appropriate hardware and software tools to attempt breach the security controls employed within the information system.
The Certified Security Analyst and Licensed Penetration Tester (ECSA/LPT) is one of EC- Council’s most popular and sought after certification standards. Certified information security professionals will be qualified with the knowledge in understanding how a hacker attacks and manipulate these attacks. Unlike a normal security certification, the ECSA/LPT program trains security professionals to also analyze the security posture of a network completely and recommend corrective measures authoritatively. EC-Council's license vouches for their professionalism and expertise thereby making these professionals more sought after by organizations and consulting firms globally.
Security professionals can also increase their penetrating testing knowledge and skills by taking part in the recently launched Advanced Penetration Testing training course, a highly technical and intensive course that focuses on attacking and defending highly secured environments. Launched by EC-Council Center of Advanced Security Training (CAST), which was designed to address the deficiency of highly technically skilled information security professionals. CAST will provide a suite of highly technical information security training that focuses on key information security domain including penetration testing, application security, and mobile forensics, among others. These highly sought after and advanced technical security training will be offered at all EC-Council hosted conferences and events, and through specially selected training partners. The launch classes for CAST will be at the upcoming TakeDownCon Dallas, from May 14-19, 2011.
Advanced Penetration Testing (APT) is a three-day highly intensive and technical security training program that focuses on attacking and defending highly secured environments. In APT, you will be learning how to attack new operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and the latest Linux servers. All of these servers will be patched, and hardened. Both Network and Host-based Intrusion Detection/Preventions systems (IDS/IPS) will be in place as well. The learning curve for this program is extremely steep, but the rewards are astronomical.

About EC-Council
EC-Council is a member-based organization that certifies individuals in various e-business and security skills. It is the owner and developer of the world famous Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) course, Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (CHFI) program, License Penetration Tester (LPT) program and various other information security training programs offered in over 60 countries around the globe. EC-Council has trained over 80,000 individuals in technical security training and certified more than 30,000 security professionals. EC-Council has launched the Center of Advanced Security Training (CAST), to address the deficiency in the lack of highly technically skilled information security professionals.