Ethical Hackers, Kurt the Cyberguy, News 13 (Central Florida)

This classroom is filled with computer hackers, but it's not what you think.
This is ethical hacker training.

Computer instructor Ralph Echemendia explains, "The goal is to learn how hackers think and what tools they use."

The class instructor says the term "ethical hacking" is used when, a company hires someone to test their system vulnerabilities. His students include government and corporate employees.

"Everybody is online these days, everything is webafied. So, because of that, that has increased the risk of all these organizations and their data," said Echemendia.

Echemendia says your personal computer or network most likely is not as secure as you think. "You'd be surprised, it really is kind of an amazing thing how insecure in general the user base out there is from your home users on broad band and DSL networks to the users at actual corporations and the corporate networks. The reality is that a lot of security devices actually create insecurities."

I asked Echemendia: "So, how long would it take a hacker to get into your computer?"

Echemendia: "Just a matter of 60 to 120 seconds to get into a system. They would never know it. If the attacker intended that to be the case they would never know it. They would be going about their daily business."

In teaching these training classes for the past three years, Echemendia tells his students to make sure they have a firewall program installed and use common sense when it comes to opening e-mails, but that no protection is fool-proof.

"Nothing is unbreakable and nothing is you know, there's no such thing as Perfect security to be honest with you. So, it's just a matter of making it Harder," said Echemendia.