Ethical Hacking - what is it?

Yesterday I heard about a course at McHenry County College (MCC) called Ethical Hacking. The comment was, "Oh, really? Could there be ethical hacking?"

Trying to find the course on MCC's website could drive just about anyone nuts. There may be a search engine there that works for finding courses, but I've never found it. Now, there's a course I'd take: "MCC Search Engines".

The following information was found by (what else?) a Google search and is quoted, in part.

"Ethical hackers and hacking

"Ethical hackers are information security professionals who are engaged in evaluating the threats to an organisation from attackers. ...

"Ethical hackers typically have very strong programming and computer networking skills and have been in the computer and networking business for several years. ...

"Ethical hacking is the methodology adopted by ethical hackers to discover the vulnerabilities existing in information systems‚ operating environments.

"These hackers typically employ the same tools and techniques as criminal attackers, but they neither damage the target systems nor steal information.

"Instead, they evaluate the security of target systems and report back to a client with the vulnerabilities discovered and appropriate recommendations to mitigate the same."

Source: www.grcoatley.mcc.education.nsw.gov.au/ipt_website/11_ethical_considerations/ethical_hacking.htm