DDLS, Australia’s leading IT Training provider, has introduced even more hands-on labs to its EC Council Ethical Hacking course. These labs are aimed at stretching and testing analytical skills essential to be able to find a security flaw against an unknown target. The EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker certification offered by DDLS helps companies improve skills for their information security professionals and achieve better processes in their organisation, from a vendor neutral perspective.
“We live in a climate where the number and severity of digital security threats is increasing. Incidents came thick and fast in 2014 – notable not just because of their number, but also because of the nature of the information taken and the spread of industries and people impacted. The extensive impact of the Heartbleed and Shell Shock bugs demonstrated what can happen to individuals and businesses that are not prepared. That’s what the Certified Ethical Hacker certification helps deliver to the business – prevention and preparedness,” said Mal Shaw, CEO of DDLS.
The five-day Certified Ethical Hacker CEHv8 course is highly practical and tailored for information security professionals. It is mapped to several government and industry standards for information security education and training – including US DoD 8570 – and the exam meets the requirements of the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) ISO/IEC 17024 standard.
It includes the use of advanced penetration testing methodologies, tools and techniques to perform comprehensive information security tests. As Australia’s only authorised training provider of the course, DDLS provides easy access to the training and flexibility on scheduling and locations for the course across Australia.
“We know that security certification is on the increase. We’ve seen it through our own training statistics and the 2013 CERT Australia Cyber Crime Security Survey confirmed that 60% of their survey participants are actively ensuring their IT security employees hold vendor certifications. However the report also revealed a year on year increase in the number of organisations that identified cyber security incidents on their network, up 34% from 22% to 56%. Of concern is that CERT also reported that 16% of organisations have no dedicated IT security resource,” said Shaw.
“It’s important to consider what your systems and data are worth to your organisation and how you would cope with the disruption of your systems being unavailable for an undetermined period of time due to a hacking incident. Australian organisations need to be vigilant in order to remain compliant and avoid damages through security breaches. As well as the losses of revenue, client confidence and reputation that a publicised security breach will bring, the updated Privacy Laws enable civil penalty orders to be enforced that can range from $340,000 for individuals up to $1.7 million for companies.
“EC Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker is very well established in the information security community, with tens of thousands of security professionals around the world already certified. It differentiates itself from other information security certifications because it tests a candidate’s knowledge and also their ability to apply that acquired knowledge to secure real assets for their organisation. Much of the time in class is spent with hands-on labs reinforcing everything covered in class,” Shaw noted.
Amongst the skills applied and tested in the fully live, networked, multi-machine lab platforms are:
- SQL injection
- Network Sniffing
- Cryptography
- Steganography
- Uncovering hidden evidence in Forensic files
- Testing the latest commercial tools for network exploitation
- Initiating a Denial of Service attack
The hands-on labs enable students to challenge their skills from the comfort of the home or office. The courseware kit also includes over 24GB of underground hacking and security tools that cannot be found in any other training course.
“It is truly an attack-based course that focuses on the most current bugs and threats, and teaches students to ‘think like a hacker’ for the best interests of their organisation. By gaining these skills, participants can then learn what vulnerabilities exist in their own systems and networks. It’s an approach that our clients have increasingly been asking for, and the inclusion of more Black Box testing ensures participants are as aware and prepared as they can be,” added Shaw.
