About 118 people will apply for any given application and 22% will be interviewed. Based on the number of positions available, only 1 or 2 people may be offered a job. Preparation is key to maximizing your chances of success. Interviews in information security are likely to include similar questions. Knowing what they are and how you can answer them will help you impress the interviewer and land the job.
How to answer interview questions
The star method is a good choice for answering interview questions. This framework can be used to answer any questions related to past experiences. It stands for situation. Task, action, result. When you’re asked questions like “Tell me about a time you did …..”,”, it helps you organize your thoughts by thinking about these four elements. Start by describing the current situation. This should include the nature of the problem, who was involved, and how many executives, senior managers, or clients were affected. Next, explain the details of your task. Next, explain the steps you took to accomplish the task. Then highlight the ways these actions led to the resolution of the problem. You will be able to give the interviewer a complete picture by highlighting each of these points.
25 Information Security Interview Question
1. What is the difference between a threat, vulnerability, and risk?
A vulnerability is an insecure system or program. Threat is an entity trying to exploit vulnerabilities in a system. Risk is the possibility of asset loss, damage, or destruction as a result.
2. How can you protect a server?
This is system hardening. It’s about making your server as secure and reliable as possible. This is your chance to show your knowledge of hacking and how you can stop it. You will want to address the following points: creating firewall rules, closing unneeded ports, changing default passwords, removing unnecessary services, applying all security patches, enabling encryption, data backups, and setting up system monitoring.
3. What is a firewall?
A firewall is a security system that blocks and allows outgoing traffic. A firewall decides whether to allow or block specific traffic according to a set of rules.
4. What’s the CIA triad, and
The CIA triad includes confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Confidentiality is the ability to restrict access to information to only authorized users. Integrity is the ability to safeguard information from unauthorized modifications. Access means that users have access to the information whenever they need it.
5. What is Regulatory Compliance?
Compliance with regulations means following the laws and regulations as mandated by the government, or industry regulators.
6. What’s the difference between encryption, encoding and hashing?
Encoding is a reversible data transformation that makes data available on various systems. It also helps to ensure availability. Encryption, a type of data transformation that can be reversed, is considered secure as it requires keys to decrypt data. It also protects confidentiality. Hashing is a one way summary of data that can’t be reversed. It is used to verify integrity.
7. What are the common indicators of compromise to identify a compromised system?
Slow performance, excessive memory usage, low storage space, unexpected pop-ups, and unexpected shutdowns are all signs of infection.
8. What is cross site scripting (XSS)? How can you defend yourself against it?
Cross-site scripting is a client side code injection attack. This happens when an attacker injects code onto a legitimate website or application. It will execute the code if someone visits that page. The website or web application must ensure that the input is clean. When you receive information from a user via a web form, or any other means, sanitation means that it must be checked for malicious codes.
9. What’s the difference between UDP & TCP?
TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that verifies errors and ensures data delivery. UDP, on the other hand, is not connected and does not verify for errors. TCP is faster than UDP, but it’s more reliable.
10. DDOS mitigation and possible mitigation?
A distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack attempts to disrupt normal traffic. This is done by flooding a device with unrequested traffic until it can’t respond properly to legitimate traffic. You can mitigate ddos by using packet filtering devices such as firewalls. These devices block spammers IP addresses and redirect traffic to the sinkhole.
11. What’s a WAF? What are the types ?
A web application firewall (WAF), is a device that protects web apps by monitoring and filtering HTTP traffic between web applications and the internet. There are three types of web application firewalls: network-based firewalls (NWAF), web application firewalls that are host-based (HWAF), and cloud-based firewalls that are cloud-based.
12. How does a Ping work?
To test whether a host can be reached over a network, the ping tool is used. The ping tool works by sending a request for information to the machine. If it responds with a data packet, then we know that the machine can be reached.
13. What is traceroute/tracert, you ask?
Traceroute allows you to track the path a data packet takes from source to destination (hops). It displays the IP addresses for each hop and provides time intervals. This tool is frequently used to troubleshoot connectivity problems.
14. What security blogs and podcasts are you following?
It is important to stay up-to-date with security news. You need to keep up-to-date with security news. There are always new vulnerabilities, patches, vendor breaches, and other details. You can find it here if you don’t subscribe to any podcasts.
15. What are HTTPS, SSL, and TLS?
HTTPS is a secure form of HTTP. It allows data to be sent between a web browser (or website) and a server. SSL is short for Secure Sockets Layer. It allows data to be encrypted, encrypted, and decrypted over the internet. TLS is an upgraded version of SSL that’s more secure.
16. Difference between policies, processes and guidelines
A process is a sequence of actions that are taken to accomplish a task. Staff must adhere to a policy when they do their daily work. While guidelines are recommended or best practices to complete a task, they are not mandatory.
17. What is the difference between asymmetric and symmetric encryption?
Symmetric encryption uses one key (a common key) for encryption and decryption. Asymmetric encryption uses two keys: one for encryption (publickey) and one for decryption.
18. What is SSH?
Secure Shell (SSH), a remote administration protocol, allows users to connect over the Internet to servers. You can use the terminal to input commands on remote servers.
19. What is salting and peppering a hash?
A salt is a random number that is passed to the hashed password. If you know the hash algorithm used, it prevents others from guessing your hash value. A pepper is an addition of random values to a password that was generated before hashing.
20. Which are the four ways you can authenticate someone?
You can authenticate anyone with something you know (password), an ID card, something they have (IDcard), something that they are (face scan or fingerprint), or something they do (the manner they walk or speak).
21. What’s the difference between a and NIDS ?
Host-based intrusion detection systems (HIDS), monitor a specific system for signs of intrusion. A network-based intrusion detection system, (NIDS), monitors traffic across the network looking for signs of malicious activity.
22. What is the difference between false positives and false negatives?
False positives are alerts that are not malicious. False negatives are alerts that are not generated for malicious activity. False negatives are more serious because malicious activity goes unreported. False positives are just as annoying.
23. What’s the difference between a Black Box Test and a White Box Test
A white box test means that an application or system has been tested using all the information available about the system’s internal workings. Black box text refers to when the testers are not provided with any internal knowledge about the system and they conduct the test with the same knowledge as an attacker from outside the company.
24. Have any questions?
This is a great opportunity to learn more about the job. Ask about the process of the job opening, how many people are involved, the size of your team, and what you would do on a daily or weekly basis. You should not ask about salary until you are sure they are interested in you being hired.
25. Why did you apply for this job?
Companies are usually looking to find out if you are a good fit for the job based on your career goals. If your skill sets and experience match the job posting, you can use this opportunity to tell why you are a good candidate for the position. This is a great time to let the company know that you are interested in staying with the company for a longer period of time.
