White hat hackers have been around for a while now, and unlike their more nefarious counterparts, white hat hackers hack for the greater good, which basically means that they use their skills to help test security systems, discover security holes, and so on, all of which are meant to prevent black hat hackers from entering.
That being said it seems that the Bank of England will be embarking on a “groundbreaking” move by hiring white hat hackers to help test and improve the security and resilience of the networks behind 20 of the UK’s largest banks and financial services. The Bank of England has yet to confirm this but this is according to the sources of the Financial Times (paywall).
So why the sudden interest in hiring white hat hackers to test the systems? Apparently this follows an event from back in 2013 called Waking Shark II which was basically a simulated scenario of what could happen if the entire banking sector was subject to a major hacking incident. Presumably the results were frightening enough for the Bank of England to take proactive measures.
The hackers that they are planning on hiring will be from companies with the CREST certification who will then proceed to test the network for vulnerabilities that might be exploited by those with less-than-good intentions. What do you guys think? Is this a smart move, or will it be too controversial?