If you're going to keep up with external attackers and malicious insiders, you have to stay current on the latest attack methods and tools.

With all the government laws and industry regulations in place, your business likely doesn't have a choice in the security matter. The problem is that being "compliant" with these laws and regulations doesn't automatically mean you're "secure." You have to take the checklist audit blinders off and dig in deeper using ethical hacking tools and techniques in order to find out what really matters.

No doubt, someone in your organization understands higher-level security audits better than this ethical hacking stuff. However, if you can sell that person on ethical hacking and integrate it into existing security initiatives, the auditing process can go much deeper and improve your outcomes. Everyone wins.

Many businesses now require in-depth security assessments of their business partners. The same goes for certain clients. The bigger companies might want to know how secure their information is on your network. The only way to definitively know where things stand is to use the methods and tools I cover in this book.

Information systems are becoming more complex by the day. Literally. It's just a matter of time before these complexities work against you in the bad guys' favor. If you're going to stay informed and ensure your critical business systems and the sensitive information they process and store stay secure, you have to look at things with a malicious mindset.

You can say passwords are weak or patches are missing but actually exploiting such flaws and showing the outcome is quite another feat. There's no better way to prove there's a problem and motivate management to do something about it than by showing the outcomes of ethical hacking.

In the event a malicious insider or external attacker still breaches your security, your business is sued, or falls out of compliance with laws or regulations, management can at least demonstrate that they were performing due diligence to uncover security risks on a periodic and consistent basis.

Someone walking around with a checklist will find security "best practices" you're missing, but they're not going to find most of the in-depth security flaws that ethical hacking is going to uncover. You know, the ones that can get you into the worst trouble. Ethical hacking brings out the warts and all.

Penetration testing is rarely enough to find everything in your systems — the scope of traditional penetration testing is simply too limited. Neither is vulnerability testing. Ethical hacking combines the best of both and gets you the most bang for your buck.

Ethical hacking not only uncovers technical, physical, and human weaknesses but it can also reveal problems with IT and security operations, such as patch management, change management, and lack of awareness, that may not be found otherwise.