3/10/2004 -- The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) announced last week that the exam for its Ethical Hacker certification will be updated on March 15.

The update comes one year after the title, which is aimed at teaching systems administrators how to protect themselves from unwanted network intrusions, originally debuted.

According to a statement released by EC-Council Technical Director Haja Mohideen, the updated exam (EC0-350) is a "marked departure" from previous versions in that it now requires candidates to be able to interpret log files, reverse engineer exploit codes, write firewall rules and identify attack signatures, among other tasks.

The company's optional, five-day "Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures" training course has also been updated.

EC-Council requires all candidates to have at least two years of security-related work experience before sitting the exam. The exam will be available for $250 worldwide via Prometric testing centers.

According to Mohideen, EC-Council has granted more than 1,000 Ethical Hacker certifications in the past 10 months.

More information about this certification can be found here. -Becky Nagel