Ethical Hacking Courses to Learn Before Someone Hacks You

Hackers have a reputation for being outlaws, and to a point, it's a bit hyped up. The reason why is because the media focuses on the bad stuff hackers do, primarily because it's almost always a sensational story.

Most of the biggest hacker attacks you'll hear about involve hacker groups breaking into major systems, stealing information, and just wreaking havoc in their own way. After all, most of the best documentaries about hacking do seem to like to talk about their "rebellious" mindsets because it sells.

Everyone also knows how breaches and IT hacking can hurt business, which doesn't help the case, either.

However, there are two sides to every coin. For every "black hat" hacker, there are tons of ethical hackers who work to prevent attacks, find bad guys, or just do the right thing with their tech skills. And, there's always room for more ethical hackers.

Want to join the ranks of "white hat" hackers and do the right thing? It is possible, and if you go to the right groups, you can even become a Certified Ethical Hacker who can show potential employers a new set of skills in the field of cyber security.

The first step to having awesome hacking skills and getting jobs from it, though, starts with knowledge. Check out these ethical hacking courses to get yourself started.

Fossbytes Academy is one of the leading online groups that teachings white hat hacking, and their Ethical Hacking for Beginners course is a great place to start. This is a class that lays out the foundation for all the other ethical hacking courses you could take later on.

Everything about this course involves showing you how to navigate Kali Linux and teaches you how to do the basics. You get to learn how to mine traffic data, use Metasploit framework to find openings, and even hide trojans.

Fossbyte's more intensive take on newbie-level ethical hacking courses can be found in their Intensive Ethical Hacking Series. This hacking course teaches you all the ways that hackers exploit websites and how to fight back.

Everything from installing Kali Linux, to working with Metasploit, to showing you how to conceal your identity using proxy servers and more is covered here. Unlike their beginner's course, this series will show you how to breach firewalls and also set up backdoors.

Looking to avoid taking multiple ethical hacking courses, but still want to learn the skill? Everything from installing Kali Linux to doing seriously damaging SQL injections to databases is covered in this massive course. Learning about penetration testing has never been easier.

To make matters better, it's also on UDemy, one of the most respected online course sites in the world. If you're looking for a high-quality course that leaves no stone unturned from a highly reliable course venue, this is the course you need to check out.

Let's say that you're really not tech savvy at all—but you still want to try your hand at ethical hacking courses. If you're really as new as can be to tech, then the best way to start your life as a white hat hacker is to learn Kali Linux inside and out.

This easy-to-follow course called Kali Linux Tutorial for Beginners is currently the number one most popular ethical hacking course in its category on UDemy.

Learn the ropes, find out why Kali's the king of hacking operating systems, and you'll find future courses to be incredibly easy as a result.

If you want to take the actual CEH exam and get your certification, congrats. It won't be easy, but it will get you job offers. The only thing is, you'll be unlikely to pass unless you take some courses that'll help prepare you for this taxing test.

Though there are certified and authorized ethical hacking exam prep courses, they tend to cost a lot of money. If you want to save money, learn all the same material, and enjoy your time doing so, you'll love this UDemy class.

Worried about making an web application that might end up getting torn to bits by hackers? Well, if you aren't, you probably should be. Web applications have a lot of potential weaknesses, and black hat hackers can cause serious damage using them.

Web Application Hacking 101 is all about giving you the tools black hat hackers have, and letting you learn how to find weaknesses that need to be fixed before it's too late. It's surprisingly useful, even if you aren't trying to make the next big website.

If you love the idea of working in network security, or just want to explore ethical hacking courses that focus on Nmap, you might find this to be a great choice.

This ethical hacking course focuses on exploring Nmap Scripting Engine, one of the most popular network scanners out there. This course will teach you how to figure out firewall rules without tripping alarm, and how black hat hackers exploit Nmap to attack.

If wouldn't be fair to put a bunch of beginner courses on this list without showing that there can be some seriously intensive, expert-level ethical hacking courses online, too.

For the serious white hat hacker, this course will let you explore the really tough stuff and also teach you how to work with Python programming. If you want to learn how to do footprinting, sniffing, or dabble in cyber forensics, this is the way to do it.

Not all ethical hacking courses involve hours upon hours of video-watching. This simple class teaches you how to insert undetectable payloads into code—and how that can help you become a better hacker over the long and short term.

This course shows you how to make the most of your payloads and shows a wide range of different situations where payloads can help improve your work as a penetration tester.

Last but not least is one of the coolest ethical hacking courses out there—the one where you learn to hack people instead of computer systems. You see, hacking isn't just about the tech side of things, and if you want to grab one of the better ethical hacking salaries, you'll need to be prepped on all fronts.

At times, the only way to really get the information you need is via people. Hacking, at its core, is about getting information and breaking into systems by any means possible. That's why real smart hackers use social engineering to get the job done.

If you want to see how black hat hackers get people to hurt themselves using social skills, you need to check out this social engineering course.