A 2026 Roadmap for Building Ethical Hacking Skills

Summary

The video recommends building pentesting skills through daily hands-on practice, supported by foundations in networking, system administration and programming. It also advises documenting work and using AI to understand tasks rather than blindly relying on it.

Key points

• The speaker says practical, consistent practice develops pentesting skills more effectively than relying on reading or videos alone.
• The recommended foundations are network administration, system administration and programming.
• Learners are encouraged to choose projects that match their interests, such as building a lab to test IDS/IPS rules or developing tools.
• The speaker recommends Hack The Box and TryHackMe for hands-on practice, and says practice can reveal gaps in skills such as Linux, reconnaissance and networking.
• Documenting exercises and solutions can help learners retain knowledge and resolve similar problems faster.
• The speaker advises using AI to understand how solutions work rather than depending on output they cannot explain.
• As an example, the speaker warns that a vague request for DCSync functionality could lead AI to suggest a Mimikatz-based approach, which they say is often not a good idea.