The evolution of the threat landscape has compelled security teams to adopt proactive offensive security approaches, such as ethical hacking and penetration testing. With Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) frameworks central to data security, understanding how these offensive security techniques support and enhance governance becomes essential. This article outlines the fundamentals of ethical hacking and GRC principles and explores the techniques and the growing importance of integrating these practices to achieve GRC goals.
What Is Ethical Hacking?
Also known as ‘clear box’ or ‘white hat’ hacking, ethical hacking involves authorized penetration testers attacking and exploiting the target system/network, similar to how a malicious threat actor would. This practice provides insight into existing vulnerabilities and how negatively impactful they could be for the business and its data.
Ethical hacking provides organizations with an agile and proactive approach to detect and fix gaps in their digital infrastructure. By leveraging penetration testing capabilities, businesses can gain insights into the gaps in their network and fix them before they lead to severe damage. Bug bounty programs offer a cost-effective way to crowdsource ethical hacking by paying only for valid findings, reducing the need for expensive internal audits and reactive incident responses. Together, these initiatives strengthen security while saving money on potential legal, regulatory, and recovery costs, making them a smart financial investment in long-term resilience.
Ethical Hacking in Practice
Ethical hacking and penetration testing capabilities can be structured and divided across red, blue, and purple teaming objectives. While all three teams depend on proactive security efforts, the objectives differ based on scope, approach, analysis, and implementation.
Red teams are tasked with simulating offensive techniques such as phishing, privilege escalation, and lateral movement to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. In contrast, blue teams utilize a security operations center (SOC) to detect and mitigate threats and attacks using tools such as security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint protection, and incident response (IR) playbooks. The purple teams serve as a collaborative bridge, integrating insights from red and blue teams to enhance defensive strategies.
Understanding GRC
GRC is often a part of the business framework. It guides the organization’s strategic goals and operational sustainability. Governance is a set of rules and processes that ensure core security elements and practices, including ethical hacking, support business objectives.
Risk management focuses on identifying vulnerabilities before exploitation and mitigating threats. It involves techniques such as risk registers, vulnerability assessments, and disaster impact analyses, which are the core elements that dictate security and risk policies across the organization. Penetration testing and red/blue team exercises are incorporated to expose exploitable weaknesses and validate technical controls.
Compliance involves adherence to laws, standards, and frameworks such as HIPAA, ISO 27001, NIST, and the EU AI Act. These frameworks ensure that both technical and governance controls meet regulatory requirements. Ethical hackers play a vital role by validating whether these controls function as intended in real-world scenarios.
The impact of ethical hacking and penetration testing practices on GRC is significant. Penetration testing for access management allows security teams to validate controls in alignment with established GRC policies. This requires the security and compliance groups to work closely and align security and business goals on a holistic level. Moreover, findings from ethical hacking exercises inform reporting, prioritize remediation, and improve incident readiness across organizations of all sizes. These best practices reinforce the proactive role ethical hacking plays in modern cybersecurity defense.
In short, GRC can be visualized as the nervous system of cybersecurity, with ethical hackers providing the reflexes, i.e., they respond to threats before any substantial damage occurs.
GRC and Ethics as a Collaborative Effort
The protection of privacy, data, intellectual property, and sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII) is a shared responsibility across the cybersecurity community. GRC implementation and objectives demand collaboration between technical and non-technical teams, hence implying that a pro-security culture across the organization is very crucial. Discouraging lack of transparency and encouraging responsible disclosure, clearly defined roles, and ethical escalation are required to ensure accountability and proactive security.
These practices are part of the larger cybersecurity or compliance ethics that tend to act as an organization’s immune system against unhealthy practices. The role of ethical hackers here is not only to identify vulnerabilities but also to verify the functioning of controls and ensure accountability. Their reports are essential to audit assurance, policy reinforcement, and risk mitigation. They strengthen security audits and encourage collaboration between the compliance team and technical or other departments.
Ultimately, ethical hacking aligns with GRC as part of a holistic approach to protect the organization’s assets and intellectual property, enabling sustainable growth. Transparency, efficiency, and accountability (TEA) remain guiding principles in managing cybersecurity within modern enterprises, particularly in the face of emerging threats such as malicious AI.
Ethical Choices in Cybersecurity
Often in ethical hacking, especially with ‘black box’ penetration testing, security personnel encounter grey areas regarding authorization, access, and unintended consequences. These ambiguities can lead to legal and ethical challenges, such as conflicts with compliance policies, accidental downtime, or data handling laws.
From a governance perspective, policies are stress-tested to determine whether they hold up under pressure or collapse when challenged. Risk management is supported through live scenario simulations, such as phishing, lateral movement, and privilege escalation, which expose real gaps in the security posture. It is essential that compliance aligns beyond checkbox exercises and should involve validation with both regional and global data security regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO, among others.
Regular pen testing for vulnerabilities uncovered critical flaws in approximately 30% of all tested projects, a drop of 20% compared to the previous year, highlighting its effectiveness when done continuously (Citadelo, 2024). It also highlights why such proactive security practices are vital for organizations to encourage and incorporate into their security policies. However, ethical dilemmas that need to be aligned and addressed remain. Some of the prominent concerns with ethical hacking are:
- Unintentional access to PII or intellectual property data
- Impact on sensitive data or processes as part of red teaming exploitation assessment
- Unintentional downtime due to access policy violation by the red team
Such scenarios highlight potential operational risks and can lead to resistance from security teams who aim to prevent these disruptions. Addressing such issues requires collaboration and confidence between the red team and other teams in terms of transparency and responsible disclosure.
This is why ethical hacking must be viewed not only as a technical exercise but as a behavioral and cultural one. These gray areas can be mitigated when ethical practices are embraced, and collaboration is fostered across red, blue, and purple teams. The result is a more resilient, transparent, and ethically grounded cybersecurity posture.
Upside of GRC
The benefits of GRC combined with ethical hacking have been widely recognized. Ethical hackers help reduce the Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) by identifying vulnerabilities early and enabling faster remediation. Compliance frameworks are pressure-tested, and internal trust is strengthened as teams are empowered through proactive risk management, audit readiness, and continuous process improvement.
Future of GRC and Ethical Hacking
The future of GRC and ethical hacking is being shaped by AI-driven tools, stricter global regulations, and the expansion of ethical roles. Ethical hackers are evolving into security strategists, policy influencers, and even compliance advisors, especially concerning AI. AI red teaming is being adopted to simulate advanced threats, and unique strategies around AI exploits are being actively explored and implemented.
Conclusion
As GRC strategies mature, a shift from reactive to proactive approaches must be embraced. Integrating ethical hacking into GRC workflows is a must, as it not only validates security but also confirms compliance. Organizations also need to develop policies for responsible disclosure and AI testing. The AI supply chain must also be monitored and hardened, with managed service providers held to well-defined security and compliance standards.
A strong security culture can be reinforced through proactive ethics. Human processes, organizational culture, and technology must work together to empower both defense and offense teams, creating a unified, resilient cybersecurity posture.
Reference
Citadelo. (2025, April 24). Ethical Hacking Report 2024: Six Vulnerabilities in Almost Every Tested System.
https://citadelo.com/en/blog/ethical-hacking-report-2024
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About the Author
Kimberly KJ Haywood
Cybersecurity Adjunct Professor, Collin College
With over 25 years of experience across finance, technology, healthcare, and government sectors, Ms. Haywood has established and led management and security practices throughout her career, including her firms: Knowledge Management & Associates, Inc. and Nomad Cyber Concepts, LLC. Her expertise in cybersecurity, governance, risk, and compliance has driven successful collaborations with top organizations like USAA, Google, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. She currently serves on the Board of AI Connex as the global chief governance and education advisor and is an adjunct cybersecurity professor at Collin College in Frisco, TX. Additionally, she contributed to the IAPP’s (a global privacy and governance organization) Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional (AIGP) Practice Exam. She has published articles on AI and is currently co-authoring a white paper on an AI Governance Framework. Her expertise in cybersecurity and governance has earned her international recognition.
