Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Answer: The easiest way to remember the difference between white and black hat hackers is to imagine an old Western movie, where the bad guy rides into town usually wearing a black cowboy hat while the good guy wears a white hat.

Black hat hackers are the villains in cybersecurity and are the ones trying to cause harm to your network, hack into your system, or hold your network hostage with a ransomware attack. Conversely, white hat hackers are ethical hackers who attempt to expose any flaws or security holes in your network to show you where to make adjustments.

Healthcare organizations can hire ethical hacking service companies to perform tests, such as penetration testing, to improve their security position. The white hat hackers test every aspect of your network to find a way in. Unlike medical audits, these testing services expose any flaws and show your IT team how to fix the issues.

Another advantage of hiring ethical hackers is that your security incident response team gets practice reacting to the “attack” of the white hat hackers.