SAN JOSE – McAfee Inc.’s Foundstone Professional Services announced the Certified Ethical Hacking course, the company’s first certified training program that gives IT professionals the skills they need to detect vulnerabilities on their own systems.

The course teaches participants the skills they need to hack into vulnerable systems, but requires students to sign a pledge that they will not use these skills on any networks other than their own.

“If you know how to break into a system, you know how to defend it,” said Bill Hau, vice-president of McAfee Foundstone Professional Services. “If you know how somebody is going to attack you, you can better defend yourself against it rather than doing paperwork exercises on theoretical attacks. This is getting your hands dirty.”

He added that customers were asking for a certified course, as it assures them that their employees have a level of competency and proficiency within their organization to protect their systems.

The course reflects what people would see in a corporate environment through a dummy network that has been set-up in an enclosed setting which the students would then use to attack. These networks do not go out to the Internet.

Hau said that once students learn how to break into systems, they will then be taught the tools they need to protect themselves from such attacks.

Those wishing to learn more attack methods, Hau said that students can take McAfee’s Ultimate Hacking courses, which provides attendees with the next level of skills from Foundstone consultants who work in the real world.

“Students will learn different attack patterns, new viruses and new attack scripts that are out there,” he added.

Hau said that the Ultimate Hacking courses teach slightly different things than the CEH course such as how to program and write scripts to attack systems. But, he added that not everyone is capable of getting to that level and that the CEH course is sufficient enough to give people the education they need to better protect their corporate networks, especially if companies want certified employees.

The CEH course is priced at $2400 US and lasts five days. Upcoming dates for future CEH courses can be found on McAfee’s McAfee.Com. Courses are offered once every two months across the United States.

This column was written by Vanessa Ho of ConnectIT

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