Here's what it's really like to be a hacker at one of the world's biggest tech companies

Charles Henderson gets paid to think like a bad guy.

As an ethical hacker for IBM, Henderson's job is to break into networks, applications, or physical locations to figure out how a real attacker would go about their work, exposing flaws and the impact those flaws might have on an organization's security.

Given the increase in cyber attacks and the need to bolster cyber security, there's been a steady shift in corporations hiring their own hackers to "pen-test" (penetration test) online systems, networks, and physical locations, IBM says.

In fact, Henderson is just one of the 1,000 security specialists the tech giant hired in 2015.

We recently spoke to Henderson, 40, about what it's really like to be a hacker for IBM. Here's what he had to say: