A lot of young people look at the internet as a training ground to hone their hacking skills. It’s apparent that these skills can only rarely benefit other people or a society, especially if their expertise is used for pen testing. Parental control over these things can not be blamed because there is only so much a parent may know about a child’s activities on the net, let alone a computer expert who won’t be caught that easily.

With that being a given, teens now look into this as a hobby and actually enjoy from the fact that they are stealing information from others or disrupting the activities of others. And the hardest part is a teen that is good at hacking can easily go rogue and become very hard to trace once they start doing their “thing”. Thus, age is never a prerequisite in hacking especially if you put into mind that everybody, no matter how young, has access to the internet.

So what motivates them to do this? Why are they enjoying from this so much? Simple, influence from their peers or from their environment and the lack of discipline. You see, a study was made by a criminologist from the Michigan State University about juvenile cybercrime or simply known as online bullying and computer hacking. This study has resulted into these two major factors as the primary reasons why these young people are doing these.

In the study that was made, it was very apparent that these young people are lacking the knowledge about the gravity of their skill and how serious are the consequences that may result if they pursue this is a hobby. As a result, rampant cyber crimes are being committed by teens that are not aware of their law-breaking acts or if they are aware, have not totally understood the entirety of it.

An assistant professor of criminal justice named Thomas Holt stated that the results from this study has pointed out one thing: parents should be more hands-on on their children especially on who they children associate with, what they children are currently doing and their children’s internet activities. He continued and said that the parents should not only limit to know their kids online or what they are doing online but also offline. This way, you can keep track of what they are doing and you can influence them to become more constructive and avoid finding the joy in committing cyber crimes.

This study particularly focused on students that are in middle school as well as in high school. More than 400 students were involved in this survey and they had come up with a primary conclusion that those teens who have come in constant contact or communication with other teens who are involved in such deeds were those who have the highest risk of being one themselves. These cybercrimes that are constantly being committed are most digital piracy or illegal acquirement of music files, watching online pornography (if younger than 18), bullying online or harassing online through means of threats done online or sexual messages and cyber-trespassing (or know as computer hacking).

For the computer users, one can never be so sure about their computer security systems because even the youngest hacker has a shot at acquiring your personal information. This is the reason why many people undergo pen testing training in order to ensure the quality of security they get. This is a fact because there are a lot of systems now that look tough and impenetrable but if they were tested by a pen testing, you would see major flaws which would then translate that your computer have not been that protected before.

In a nutshell, the pen testing or the pen test is a test that evaluates the computer system’s security via sending out a malicious source to attack the computer system. During the attack, there is a great deal of analysis done in order to properly evaluate the capabilities of a computer system. Through this, a computer system can consistently be improved especially if the one who is testing has undergone a pen testing training.

The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) is a member-based organization that certifies individuals in cybersecurity and e-commerce. It is the owner and developer of 20 security certifications. EC-Council has trained over 90,000 security professionals and certified more than 40,000 members. These pen testing training and certifications are recognized worldwide and have received endorsements from various government agencies. They also offer a certification in pen test.

More information about EC-Council is available at www.eccouncil.org.