Ethical hackers help companies to find weaknesses and vulnerabilities in their computer systems that malicious hackers could find and exploit. Businesses are, therefore, on the lookout for skilled ethical hackers to ensure their systems and networks are safe from malicious attacks.

In this guide, you will discover the best ethical hacking courses that you can enrol in to learn how to become an ethical hacker.

Best Ethical Hacking Courses

Become an Ethical Hacker

Become an Ethical Hacker is an ethical hacking course that you can take on LinkedIn. By taking this course, you will get to learn from four different expert trainers – Lisa Bock, James Williamson, Scott Simpson, and Malcolm Shore. Their experience encompasses various fields such as network security, web development, and forensics.

Given that this course is focused on ethical hacking, you will be introduced to an overview of what ethical hacking is before getting deeper into a plethora of ethical hacking topics such as System Hacking, Penetration Testing, and Troubleshooting Your Network with Wireshark, among many others.

This course is perfect for anyone that wants to get started with ethical hacking and is looking for a course that will allow them to learn, practice, and implement.

Platform: LinkedIn

Duration: 33 hours

Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch

Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch is an entry-level course for anyone that wants to learn hacking and has basic IT skills. Zaid Sabih is the course creator. Sabih is a white hat hacker, computer scientist, and the founder and CTO of zSecurity – a company that is devoted to providing ethical hacking training and cyber security courses.

The course starts by teaching the basics of ethical hacking as well as different disciplines of penetration testing. From there, the course gradually gravitates to a more advanced level for learners covering areas such as Network Hacking, Gaining Access to Computer Devices, Website Hacking, plus many more. Learners will enjoy full-time access to the course and get a certificate upon completion.

Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch is perfect for any beginner given the course structure and how easy it is to understand.

Platform: Udemy

Duration: 13.5 hours

Cybersecurity Specialisation

Cybersecurity Specialisation is a course offered by the University of Maryland and can be pursued online on Coursera. The course is taught by four different instructors – Jennifer Golbeck, Michael Hicks, Jonathan Katz and Gang Qu. The Cybersecurity Specialization course has five different sub-courses: Usable Security, Software Security, Cryptography, Hardware Security and Cybersecurity Capstone Project.

Since we cannot talk about hacking without talking about cyber security, the course starts with the basic concepts that are needed for developing a secure system. The first four courses focus on different facets and types of security while the last course is a final project that you will be expected to take. Once you have completed all the courses, you will get a certification.

This course is ideal for anyone that is interested in improving their hacking skills as it is mainly meant for intermediate level learners and is, thus, not suitable for a beginner.

Platform: Coursera

Duration: 5 months

Ethical Hacking Fundamentals

Ethical Hacking Fundamentals is a series of courses that have been designed to help learners understand the topics, techniques, tools, and jargons that are used in the security field. The courses are offered by Dale Meredith and Troy Hunt and have been divided into three sections: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Each section has seven different courses that are between two hours to more than seven hours. The beginner section’s courses mainly focus on introducing learners to ethical hacking and what it is. As you get into other sections, the course content becomes more complex with topics such as penetration testing, SQL injection, and cryptography, among others.

Although this course is ideal for entry-level learners, you will be required to have a strong understanding of TCP/IP and operating systems and have at least one year of experience working with networking technologies.

Platform: Pluralsight

Duration: 74 hours 

Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking

Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking is a course that allows you to learn how to protect yourself or your company from cyber attackers and how to exploit networks. Just as technology and the Internet keep advancing, so are cyber crimes which are giving rise to the everyday need for white hat hackers. This course has 19 modules and will allow you to learn and master different skills such as Intrusion Detection, DDoS Attacks, Policy Creation, Virus Creation, Buffer Overflows, Reconnaissance with Social Engineering and Google, among others.

Once you complete this course, you will be equipped with the right tools needed for developing and implementing a successful vulnerability prevention strategy to help keep away attackers from gaining access to key systems. In addition, you will also get a certificate in Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking.

This course is ideal for intermediate learners.

Platform: Cybrary

Duration: 9 hours 51 minutes

Cyber Security Basics: A Hands-on Approach

Cyber Security Basics is a course that introduces learners to cyber security and its different aspects. This course will teach you what the main existing cyber security threats are and how you can protect yourself against them. The course is taught by five different instructors all who are experts in the computer security field and are professors and researchers at the Computer Security Lab of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Some of the topics that you will get to learn when taking this course include computer forensics, cyber defense, and reverse engineering. The course uses a practical approach, which means that all the materials you need will be availed to you to give you a better understanding of attacks and allow you to come up with appropriate countermeasures to prevent them.

The course is suitable for intermediate learners.

Platform: edX

Duration: 6 weeks

The Complete Ethical Hacking Course: Beginner to Advanced!

The Complete Ethical Hacking Course is considered one of the best ethical hacking courses that you can find online to learn ethical hacking. The course was created by Ermin Kreponic who is a Linux enthusiast who has a passion for troubleshooting problems related to network systems. With the guarantee of a certificate upon completion, this course will take you on a journey of learning the ins and outs of penetration testing and ethical hacking.

The entire course is divided into 26 different sections which gives you the freedom to start from anywhere you feel more knowledgeable about as you get to learn how to protect and secure any network from loss of data and black hat hackers. What makes this course even more attractive is the fact that you get to enjoy support from the experts as well as a thorough explanation for every practical exercise given leaving you with no doubt whatsoever.

The course is suitable for beginners, intermediates, and advanced learners alike.

Platform: Udemy

Duration: 25 hours 10 minutes

If you want to learn more about ethical hacking, check out our list of the best hacking books for ethical hackers to read in 2020.