Security firm trains hackers

White hats get to grips with a black art

The lecturers have been attending courses run by Irish IT security company Espion in preparation for the launch of ITB's own courses in ‘ethical hacking' for evening students, due to start next month.

One ITB lecturer who learnt his tricks of the trade from Espion was Mark Cummins, who lectures in computer systems, databases and operating systems, but mainly in networking. He is a certified Cisco instructor and usually teaches CCNA certification courses to some of the college's industry partners such as Ericsson, Damovo and IBM.

Cummins said: "Espion's course was a huge benefit and a stepping stone in the right direction, providing us with the foundation for our own course."

ITB's ethical hacking programme is being organised and the Department of Informatics, with plans for classes on two evenings a week.

Another lecturer on Espion's course was Dr Kevin Farrell. "One of our colleagues had completed the US equivalent of the course on ethical hacking; we subsequently discovered we needed an EC Council certified course, and Espion was able to step up with that content. The hacking lecture material was very new to us, and has been very useful for putting together our own course."

Cummins added: "The ability for me to easily highlight (security) threats to students lets me add greatly to my other courses, forcing the students to take note of the risk and to see the direct result of poor implementation."

The budding hackers described Espion's trainers as highly knowledgeable and "the highlight of a hugely interesting and enjoyable course."

Source: Tech Central