As a cybersecurity professional, I never use the word "hacker", precisely because of this. I speak to business people and other cybersecurity people all day, and the word means wildly different...
As a cybersecurity professional, I never use the word "hacker", precisely because of this. I speak to business people and other cybersecurity people all day, and the word means wildly different things to different people. Because of that it's imprecise.
I use "threat actor" when speaking about a potential adversary to a cybersecurity person. I use "attacker" when speaking about a potential adversary to a business person. I use "information security professional" when speaking about someone in infosec to both.
Hacker is not only imprecise, it just sounds amateurish. Plus, I don't want to validate the guy that sends millions of spam emails every day asking people to send Bitcoin to his wallet so that he can return it 1000x as a "hacker". He's just a criminal scammer doing what literally anyone in the world with 30 minutes of time on their hands and a computer could do. A threat actor, not a hacker.
As a cybersecurity professional, I never use the word "hacker", precisely because of this. I speak to business people and other cybersecurity people all day, and the word means wildly different things to different people. Because of that it's imprecise.
I use "threat actor" when speaking about a potential adversary to a cybersecurity person. I use "attacker" when speaking about a potential adversary to a business person. I use "information security professional" when speaking about someone in infosec to both.
Hacker is not only imprecise, it just sounds amateurish. Plus, I don't want to validate the guy that sends millions of spam emails every day asking people to send Bitcoin to his wallet so that he can return it 1000x as a "hacker". He's just a criminal scammer doing what literally anyone in the world with 30 minutes of time on their hands and a computer could do. A threat actor, not a hacker.