Meet the man who masters ethical hacking

Breaking in

A 22-year-old who has his life all figured out, and is hacking through ‘national-security’ records, which is ‘ethical’, is like meeting a character from a Matrix film. Trishneet Arora does not have a degree yet, but he is already running a company, has written a book, and provides cyber security solutions to cyber-crime investigation, forensics and multi-national companies.

He belongs to the community of programmers and networking wizards, who devised the term hacker. Without them (hackers), there’ll be no internet, or the World Wide Web.

His book, The Hacking Era gives an account of ‘ethical hacking’, its uses, processes and requirements. Arora tells Metrolife, “Hackers are not only those who ‘break into’ a system to retrieve confidential information. Ethical hacking is when multi-national companies or any investigating agency require hackers to trace a problem with the strength of their security system, a weakness in their server or within their network.”

He explains that his job is to solve terrorism cases and cyber-crime cases for the police. It started with the Punjab police, who approached him for conducting training sessions on cyber-crime investigation and forensics, combating against network vulnerabilities and computer data theft.

His early years give a glimpse of how he achieved this knowledge at such an early stage. He hails from a middleclass family, who got his the first computer at the age of 11. The young lad began his experimentation with it and gradually mastered all about computer hardware. He was so deeply involved to crack the computing machine that he couldn’t clear his standard eighth examination.

However, through open school learning, he completed his tenth examination.
He says, “As a result of my computer fanaticism, I got curious about ethical hacking and cyber security. I was so enthralled in this subject that I decided to put pen to paper and share my discoveries.” But his first book didn’t do well owing to some hitches. Later he began working on The Hacking Era, which was published in February 2013.

“I also provide cyber security training to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Punjab Police, Gujarat police, Reliance Industries Limited, Amul, Ralson, (India) Ltd, Avon Cycles Ltd, MNCs from Dubai and UK. I train IPS officers, Crime Branch Cell officials, bank employees,” he adds.

He explains, that big MNCs and security agencies like CBI have extremely ‘confidential’ data that they don’t want anyone to be able to view and also security levels are so high, that every now and then they have to strengthen the system. In such a situation he goes in to ‘hack’ their computers.

“If I am able to hack their system, that means their system is lacking in security. Anyone who wants, can hack in the way I did. We tell them what all is lacking and tell them what they can do to improve their system,” says Arora.

Currently, he runs his company called TAC Security Solutions, with six more individuals. They recognise themselves as ethical hackers. TAC will launch in UAE in coming February, Arora says.