Life Hacks

     Want to know a good life hack? Hire a hacker. Now, that might seem like odd advice, but hiring a hacker for your business could actually end up benefiting you. I'm not saying you should go out and hire Anonymous to hack competitors' websites; I'm saying you should have test runs on whether or not your website is hackable.
     We all know hacking is unethical. There's no way around that. But the thing is, the vast majority of people live ethically gray lives, and many of them are completely unethical. All that to say, there are Bad People in this world. And these people will try to hack your website, business, and customer information if you are successful and the information is accessible. So why not beat them to it?
     This form of hacking is known as constructive hacking, where someone uses hacking as a way to solve a collective goal (for good of course) (King). In this case, it is helpful to engage in constructive hacking as a way to preemptively problem solve and see things from a hacker's perspective.
     After Target was famously hacked in 2013, they brought in "security experts" at Verizon to "probe its network for weaknesses," (Krebs). Now, the article doesn't say specifically, but it doesn't take a lot of logic to reason that these experts were probing for weaknesses by simulating attacks as hackers would do. In fact, Target recently opened a "Cyber Fusion Center," designed to help keep Target's cyber security secure. This center employs a group of people called the "Red Team" whose entire job is to attempt to hack into Target's system. Seriously.
     Clearly, if Target had had all of this in place prior to the security breach, there is a good chance the breach wouldn't have happened. When you look at it from this perspective, it seems like it is the ethical necessity to hire these cyber hacking teams. If you don't, you're leaving innocent customers exposed to malevolent hackers who will try to steal their information. Not taking steps to prevent this is unethical and unacceptable.
     So if you want to stay out of hot water and avoid large information infiltrations, take that preemptive security step and hire a hacker. You won't regret it.