What is a good score in CEH?

Certification: ECCouncil CEH - Certified Ethical Hacker

The Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) exam is administered by International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) and accredited by American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The exam consisting of 125 multiple choice questions to be completed in four hours with a passing score of 70%. Though there are candidates who have scored more than 95% in the exam, earning the certification only requires the candidate to get at least 70% to receive the certification and get a job as an ethical hacker.

Being an ethical hacker is an opening to a unique and lucrative job market in the field of security systems in the corporate environment as well as government IT sector. The demand for specialised security professionals with expertise in penetration testing and ethical hacker is in high demand. The profession is involving high salaries, is an excellent option for newbies in the industry as well as for experienced professionals for digging deeper to enhance their knowledge and skills. Entry to this distinctive arena of security systems job market is through the CEH certification offered by EC-Council which is recognised for establishing standards for the ethical hacking knowledge expertise.

CEH Exam:

The CEH exam tests a candidate’s competence in 19 domains including Introduction to Ethical Hacking, Scanning Networks, System Hacking, Viruses and Worms, Social Engineering, Session Hijacking, Hacking Web Applications, Hacking Wireless Networks, Buffer Overflow, Penetration Testing, Footprinting and Reconnaissance, Enumeration, Trojans and Backdoors, Sniffers, Denial of Service, Hacking Webservers, SQL Injection, Cryptography  and Evading IDS, Firewalls, and Honeypots.

The CEH exam is divided into seven sections including background (5 questions), assessment/ analysis (16 questions), security (31 questions, tools/programs/systems (40 questions), procedures/methodologies (25 questions), policy/regulation (5 questions) and ethics (3 questions). The section with the highest weightage of 32% in the exam is tools/programs/systems section, followed by security section with a weightage of 25%, methodology/procedure section with a weightage of 20%, assessment/analysis section with a weightage of 13%, background and policy/regulation section with a weightage of 4% each and finally, ethics with a weightage of 2%.

For being eligible for the CEH certification, a candidate has two options. The first option is to attend the official CEH training which can be taken in any of the three formats including computer-based training (CBT), instructor-led training and live online training. However, the program must have EC-Council approval such as Official CEH Boot Camp by Unitek Education. The second option allows a candidate to take up the CEH exam without attending the official training. For this, the candidate must have documented information about their two or more years of experience in the field of security system.  The candidates are supposed to remit fee of $100 as eligibility application fee and submit the CEH Exam Eligibility form along with the verification from their employer. If the form is approved EC- Council sends the voucher number for registration for CEH exam through e-mail.

CEH Course:

The CEH official course is the most advanced curriculum for ethical hacking in the world covering 20 important domains of security. The class engages the candidates into an environment where they can have hands-on experience on conducting ethical hacking. With complete exposure to ethical hacking methodology, the course helps the candidates to master the skills to handle penetration testing or a situation that demand ethical hacking. During the course, the candidates are trained to achieve optimal information on the security position of an organisation by scanning, testing, hacking and securing their own security systems. The advantages of this course over other similar courses include:

Advanced Course Curriculum:

The researchers of EC-Council ensure that the course covers the most innovative techniques of hacking by extracting in-depth information about the advanced hacking attacks used by the hackers. This information is used to develop and exemplify the methodologies to counter attack or undertake countermeasures for the community defending the security system. The course comprises of 20 modules covering various techniques, tools, concepts, tips and countermeasures of the complete ethical hacking.

Real-Time Practice:

The course trains its students through hacking methodologies used in real life scenario to deal with threats. Unlike other courses that usually provide training through simple tests on information security and automated scans to identify vulnerabilities in the security system. The real time practice better equips the candidates with the competence to make informed decisions for protecting the information resources of an organisation.

World-wide Recognition:

The CEH certification is considered as the most authenticate validation for a professional’s competence in hacking technologies. The advanced curriculum of the course is one of the primary reasons for the global recognition for the course. Thus, being certified as CEH helps a professional to attain the best knowledge and skills in the field of ethical hacking or penetration testing. The course also brings the candidate one step closer to achieve the globally recognised CEH certification exam.

Hands on Hacking tools and Lab:

The course allows the candidates to understand the real time threats and hacking tools used by the illegal hackers. Through exposure to the descriptive, analytical and result-oriented labs, the candidates get a better understanding of the real information security structures in organisations. The official CEH course is the only ethical hacking course that offers DVDs with more than 24 GB of underground hacking techniques and security tools in the course kit.

Reference Material:

The reference material provided by EC-Council’s course is not only helpful for the course but also aids a valuable resource throughout the career of a professional. This compares to the other courses that usually provide presentations strictly related to the course as references. The students of EC-Council’s course receive constantly updated resources such as videos, whitepapers and tools through various delivery channels to aid complete knowledge enhancement.