Become a Penetration Tester in 2024

In an exponentially advancing digital world, the need for professionals in the cybersecurity field has never been more essential. As organizations need to enhance the security defense of their assets, ethical hackers or penetration testers have turned into frontline defenders against digital threats.

These skillful individuals are proactively looking for system vulnerabilities that can be highly risky for a breach. Thus, their effort can be a great way to fortify the company’s digital fortresses.

If you’re interested in the idea of joining the white hat community, we provide a comprehensive guide to becoming a penetration tester in 2024 which could help you understand the scope and the steps needed to do so.

Check the full information below:

Who Are Penetration Testers?

As the name tells you, penetration testing, abbreviated as pen testing, is an action to purposely break into a system. Remember that they are supposed to do it in order to find those tiny cracks in the system that can be utilized by the actual hackers.

So, the penetration testers will use any toolset they have, whether they’re commercial or customized, in order to do the break-ins. However, the job doesn’t end here. Aside from getting into the system, they also need to organize and report their findings. These can be used as an input for the future security protection strategies.

As most people won’t completely grasp the technicality of it, the testers will have to present their complex findings to something that they can understand. With that in mind, good communication and presentation skills are highly important as well.

For some people, the job may offer a unique challenge as it’s really a time-basis and requires deep thinking. So being secretive and able to work under pressure are some of the best penetration tester qualities.

Understanding The Tasks

As we’ve mentioned before, their main task is to find any system vulnerabilities before any criminal hackers find them. So they need to be quicker and highly effective with the workflow. There are some job titles that are highly related to penetration testing, such as security analyst, security engineer, system analyst, and finally, security consultant.

The main idea here is that their job is to enhance businesses’ and individuals’ security systems by finding the weaknesses and reporting them for future development. Their findings are really valuable for related parties. Once the weaknesses have been found, they can react quickly by using the proper strategy to improve their system security for better digital asset protection.

To better understand the work of a penetration tester, you can get a better idea by knowing how hacking works in general. As you probably know, those criminal hackers are able to get inside the system by using the system vulnerabilities as a key to open the security gate. These vulnerabilities are commonly hard to find, but they’re still there.

By using their own tools, they can go deep beneath the company’s system, and utilize the weaknesses against them. Before they know it, all important data could be stolen. As terrifying as it is, the case happens everywhere and is not only limited to businesses but also individuals.

Thus, in order to protect their security system from future breaches, companies need to hire professional individuals to enhance it. And that’s when the penetration testers come in. They will be paid for finding and repairing those system vulnerabilities. However, it’s not as easy as you might think.

These testers will have to finish their work before the actual hackers do. It’s some kind of race between the white hat and black hat hackers, and it’s definitely an intense one. While the actual hackers mainly use offense strategies, the penetration testers use offensive defense strategies. They will find the same weaknesses, but not for their own gain. Later on, they report those findings to the clients for future security development.

Does it Pay Well?

Yes, really well, in fact. According to some resources, the estimated average annual payment for penetration testers is around $97,638 in the US. It consists of the main payment and additional ones. The additional payments may come from profit-sharing, bonuses, or commissions paid by employers.

The amount of money they can receive is highly dependent on several factors, including their skill, experience, system complexity, and the field industry they’re working with. Some industries may pay better than others, for example, the military and financial businesses.

Skills and Experience Needed

In order to get an opportunity to apply the pen testing projects, you’ll have to equip yourself with the necessary skills. In this field, the requirements for hiring new testers may vary depending on the company’s decision.

Sometimes, they will require the candidates to have specific certifications in information security. But, most employers would want their new recruits to have at least a bachelor’s degree in computer science or information security. For a more advanced position, you’ll need to have a master’s degree in relevant industry.

Of course, you’ll need to demonstrate your skills as well during the recruitment, so best be prepared for that as well. As for the work experience, you have to be familiar with programming languages that are mostly used, including:

• Python
• Golang
• Bash
• PowerShell

A tester should also have the experience of working with various network protocols, firewalls, and operating systems. Things like data encryption, virtual machine environments, or IPS/IDS systems should also be learned.

To do their testing, the penetration testers usually use some security tools, like:

• Metasploit
• Kali
• Kaduu
• Aircrak-ng
• Qualys
• Probely
• And many others.

Each tool may have specific steps required, so continuous learning and adapting are definitely needed if you were to become a penetration tester.

How to Become a Penetration Tester in 2024

Now, to become a penetration tester in 2024, there are a few things you need to prepare. Most of these are highly tied to personal development, so if you’re really intrigued, you’ll have to be ready.

Do Self-analysis

We know that system penetration may give a certain impression to the people. Most people would think that becoming a tester will make them seem cool as seen in the movies. But, we want to tell you something. Penetration testing is not a job that anyone can do.

When choosing penetration tester as your career, you have to be ready to do continuous learning as information security is the world where everything keeps developing. You’ll have to work and adapt to new vulnerabilities and tools to fight those criminal hackers.

So, the job also requires you to have a better understanding of your own qualities. So, it’s better to be honest with your own self starting now.

Education

Back in the day, companies would use the services of actual hackers in the hope of turning them from the dark side to the good side. And it worked, for most companies, at least.

But things are changing now as penetration testing has become more popular as most testers actually came from college degrees. Most of them have bachelor’s degrees in the cybersecurity discipline, while some of them actually got their master’s degrees.

So, getting into college can be a great method for the testers-to-be to see the wider scope of cybersecurity, while also getting an understanding of what the companies actually need.

Get The Certifications

Certifications are actually a good way to test your skills and knowledge in the related field. So after finishing your college degree, you can increase your professional value by obtaining these certifications.

Employers would love to see a candidate whose skills have been proven and recognized. What’s better is that many organizations are offering ethical hacking certifications for those interested in becoming ethical hackers.

Start Job Searching

After you’re completely sure about your choice of career and well prepared with all the things you can get, now begins the job hunting. A penetration tester is a job that’s highly needed for many businesses and industries. Thus, it won’t be hard for you to find a job opportunity related to information security.

You can seek some places like LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, or Indeed to find companies in need of a penetration tester. As this career path has become more popular, it’s normal to see high competition in any place, and that’s understandable. So keep searching, and hopefully, you may land on a good pen testing job.

Conclusion

As we close the article on how to become a penetration tester in 2024, we hope that the guide may help you to determine the scope of this career, what the next step you need to take, and learn the opportunities.

A penetration tester isn’t a job that can be considered easy. In order to be successful in the industry, it requires continuous learning and adapting. As the day changes, new vulnerabilities arise, requiring the testers to research the new methods once again. And it’ll be going continuously as we can’t really stop those vulnerabilities from appearing. They always exist, and it’s bound to happen.

So, by committing to learning more every day, and practicing your skills, you basically already setting some solid pillars to bring yourself to success.

Now, if you want to know more about penetration testers, there are a lot of places you can visit to learn something new, like online forums, books, or digital courses. However, there’s one other place we highly recommend, which is IndexCyber.

For those aspiring to be a bug hunter, penetration tester, or ethical hacker, IndexCyber offers deep and thorough courses that can be helpful to hone your skills. You may also learn any topic you love in the wide cybersecurity field.

Uncover the possibilities now!