Penetration into the Social Sciences

BLUF: Penetration testers, or more widely known as Ethical hackers, use all types of skills and resources to understand and react to the world of cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity as a Whole

Cybersecurity is heavily affected by other fields, and makes it an interdisciplinary field. It uses information from the other fields to understand how to take care of cyberspace. One example of this is in relation to the criminology field; where it describes why criminals act or react to certain situations. This helps the cybersecurity field to understand why hackers commit crimes and how they can be potentially stopped. Just stopping the hackers with theories or studies does not always do the job, therefore ethical hackers were created. They use the same methods as malicious hackers, but instead of causing harm to people, they use those skills to improve security (National Cybersecurity Alliance, 2024).

Principles of Social Science

Just like any other profession in cybersecurity, ethical hackers also use some of the principles of social science. The main principle they use is Ethical neutrality, and they implement this all throughout their career, hence the name ethical hacker. They can use their skills at any time to turn bad and start hacking into companies maliciously, but instead they decide to contribute to the greater good and make cyberspace more secure (CompTIA, 2022). Another principle they would need to use is Parsimony. Whenever an ethical hacker finds a vulnerability, they need to report it to the people they found it for, but sometimes the report needs to be explained more simply so it can be understood by everyone that is authorized to that information (Okta, 2024).

Ethical Hackers’ Impact

Ethical hackers can be used in any institution but is more focused on higher risk institutions like healthcare, corporations, and governments. These organizations hold a lot of data and sensitive information so an ethical hackers’ impact on these organizations still helps the individual people by protecting their secured data. Since ethical hackers focus more on the technical side of cybersecurity, and deal with scripts and code, they aren’t as focused on the social engineering or human error side of cybersecurity. They still have the ability to conduct a fake social engineering attack with consent from the victim to show them how easy or hard it can be exploited (Perdue Global, 2025).

Conclusion

Ethical hackers are a key aspect in the security of data and cyberspace, but focused on the technical side of cybersecurity. They provide a new perspective to security because they need to break into a system with consent to show the vulnerabilities within that system. Since they use the same skills as a malicious hacker, some people are a little skeptical about them because what if they decide that they don’t want to contribute to the greater good anymore. Despite this thought process of some individuals, ethical hackers are more on the rise to help big companies and even government agencies to get to the vulnerability before any malicious hackers get to it and use it harmfully. 

References

CompTIA. (2022, July 28). What is ethical hacking: Cybersecurity. CompTIA. http://www.comptia.org/content/articles/what-is-ethical-hacking 

National Cybersecurity Alliance. (2024, August 15). The evolution of ethical hacking: From curiosity to cybersecurity. National Cybersecurity Alliance. http://www.staysafeonline.org/articles/the-evolution-of-ethical-hacking-from-curiosity-to-cybersecurity

Okta. (2024, August 30). Ethical hacking: What it is & examples. Okta. http://www.okta.com/identity-101/ethical-hacking/ 

Purdue Global. (2025, January 31). What is ethical hacking?. Purdue Global. https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/information-technology/ethical-hacker/