Technology and Business
Why Enterprise Architects Must Closely Work with Ethical Hackers
A Modern Enterprise Architecture Approach — Chapter 5
The cybercrime rate significantly increased, and cybersecurity measures required amendment. Security needed to be embedded in all levels of the system development lifecycle, including the conceptual phase.
Chapter Introduction
Artificial intelligence and associated emerging technologies changed the resource requirements in technology organizations.
The cybercrime rate significantly increased, and cybersecurity measures required amendment. Security needed to be embedded in all levels of the system development lifecycle.
For example, cybersecurity measures need to start at a conceptual level.
In the past, enterprise architects worked in silos and on top of other architects and technical specialists. They only participated at the conceptual level, neglecting critical phases such as design, development, and implementation.
However, in modern enterprise architecture, especially in digital transformation programs, enterprise architects must work closely with other team members to meet emerging technology and business requirements.
Due to significant changes in approach, I authored modern enterprise architecture to document and share my decades of experience.
One of the critical resources in digital transformation programs in sizeable organizations is capable and supportive ethical hackers.
This chapter highlights the importance of the ethical hacking process and the value of ethical hackers for developing and implementing enterprise architectures in sizeable digital transformation programs.
Security for Enterprise Architecture
Security has the utmost importance in digital transformation programs. In addition, cybersecurity is a critical domain of enterprise architecture.
There is not a single day in the press or social media that we don’t hear about security breaches of business organizations operating on the Internet.
Besides, when security is compromised, privacy is also conceded. For example, a minor security issue recently caused millions of social media accounts to leak into the public domain.
As digital transformation initiatives produce products and services on digital platforms, a minor security breach might impact the program and overall organizations.
The cost of security breaches can be prohibitive. In addition, they might have other harmful effects on the business, such as losing reputation and valuable customers.
Therefore, modern enterprise architects pay special attention to preventative measures. They consider all factors proactively and harden security to prevent cybersecurity breaches.
Cybersecurity for Digital Transformation
Cybersecurity, network, mobility, and IT service management are critical domains in digital transformation programs.
Even though enterprise architects have a broad understanding of these domains, they can’t obtain deep skills covering all aspects.
Therefore, enterprise architects need specialists and subject matter experts in these areas. In addition, cybersecurity requires multiple specialists and subject matter experts in numerous domains. One of them is ethical hackers.
Cybersecurity is a critical factor for successful modernization and digital transformation solutions.
Related to advanced security, Blockchain, a relatively new technology, is becoming critical for new security requirements, which could be enablers for modernization goals.
Cybersecurity is a vast security domain and touches every aspect of security management, such as identity management, authentication, authorization, and many more areas.
Enterprise architects need the knowledge and skills of ethical hackers who specialize in these areas.
Various domains such as Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Mobility, Big Data, and analytics services require hardening of security as they all operate via the Internet.
Cybersecurity poses additional risks for artificial intelligence and robotics-related projects in digital transformation programs. All sizeable organizations nowadays include artificial intelligence and robotics in their digital transformation programs.
Value of Ethical Hacking for Enterprise Architecture
Criminal hackers manipulate data, information, knowledge, assets, money, and the reputation of people and organizations for various purposes.
As opposed to criminal hackers, ethical hackers support business processes and people. They address vulnerabilities, reduce the risk of threats, enhance conditions, and resolve security issues promptly.
The ethical hacking process primarily aims to identify security and privacy vulnerabilities in the systems, tools, and solution building blocks.
As a metaphor, ethical hacking is seen as an antidote to criminal hacking.
The critical role of an ethical hacker is the early identification of vulnerabilities and resolving them promptly and proactively.
Ethical hackers require broad security knowledge and technical specialty in multiple domains.
Essential Skills and Expectations from Ethical Hackers
Ethical hackers must be more knowledgeable, experienced, and skillful than criminal hackers to contribute to the enterprise architecture of digital transformation programs. In other words, they need to outsmart them.
Ethical hackers use state-of-the-art security management tools. The prominent tool is the packet analyzer.
Packet analyzers (aka sniffers) can be software or hardware appliances intercepting packets in the network and capturing network traffic as communication packets.
Ethical hackers have core hacking skills, including the knowledge of techniques such as sniffing, scanning, reverse engineering, disk/memory forensics, and vulnerability analysis.
Digital transformation programs might use the skills of ethical hackers to capture network traffic for auditing and corrective actions to meet rigorous industry compliance requirements.
Ethical hackers are technical specialists in security and cybersecurity domains covering network, data, and mobility domains. In addition, ethical hackers might need to understand system architecture and design principles.
Knowledge of the business processes, application landscape, data platforms, data practices, and industry awareness helps ethical hackers to see the big picture in digital transformation programs with the help of enterprise architects.
Analytics is an essential cybersecurity function. Therefore, ethical hackers must be capable of analyzing systems, hosting infrastructures, networks, designs, business applications, data, and database systems.
Digital transformation programs comprise numerous applications coded in various programming and scripting languages. Thus, ethical hackers must understand coding and scripting languages.
As hosting is essential in digital transformation programs, ethical hackers need skills in various operating systems such as Windows, Unix, Linux, ZoS, and macOS.
Every digital transformation program has a network connected to other networks, including the Internet. Therefore, networking and internet-working skills are essential for ethical hackers.
Regarding networks and internetworking, ethical hackers cover network protocols, wireless protocols, network architecture, infrastructure frameworks, network application patterns, network devices, management tools, connectivity flows, mobility structure, data communications, and integration of local and wide area networks.
In addition, ethical hackers must understand data platforms, practices, storage, data lifecycle management, databases, data lakes, Big Data Analytics, information processing, and expert knowledge systems covering artificial intelligence initiatives.
Ethical hackers also contribute to securing mobile devices. Thus they must understand the digital technologies, mobile networks, and mobile workflows in the organization’s networks.
Besides, ethical hackers need to understand the mechanisms and implications of emerging technology stacks such as IoT (Internet of Things), Cognitive Computing, Cloud Computing, Edge and Fog Computing, artificial intelligence, and Big Data Analytics.
Apart from these technical skills, ethical hackers also need soft skills (e.g., effective communication) and interpersonal skills to communicate in various styles and levels, such as enterprise architects, technical teams, project managers, technical executives, partners, and business stakeholders.
Ethical hackers participate in incident and problem management of digital transformation programs to support the stakeholders, as mentioned earlier.
As an innovative approach, technology executives in digital transformation programs might need the input of ethical hackers to create new solutions in the invention and innovation process.
Conclusions and Takeaways
The ethical hacking process and leveraging the necessary capabilities of ethical hackers can help digital transformation programs address security incidents, resolve problems, and proactively prevent threats.
The input of these activities can provide valuable insights to enterprise architects and improve the enterprise architecture process.
Therefore, capable and collaborative ethical hackers might be valuable resources for digital transformation programs contributing to the development and implementation of modern enterprise architecture.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Links to Previous Chapters
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