Information Security Engineer Interview Questions

What Is A Three

The basic three-way handshake is used by the Transmission Control Protocol when it needs to set up a TCP/IP connection. This is necessary when the connection is made over an IP-based network.

Other terminology associated with a three-way handshake includes SYN, SYN-ACK, and ACK. The reason for this is that there are three messages being transmitted by the TCP to negotiate and start a TCP session between two hosts or computers.

Insight into the question: This is a basic theory question that shows your understanding of how a TCP connection is established over an IP network. This connection method is the most common that you will find over the internet and most modern networks, so showing that you understand how it works is important.

Difference Between Ids And Ips

Intrusion Detection Systems : IDS is an alert system which detects any malicious activity. It alerts the administrator if any potential threat is identified.

Intrusion Prevention Systems : IPS is a preventive measure or protocol that responds to threats and can reject them. IPS manages to issue firewall directives and server connections in addition to rejecting data packets.

Introduction: Top 50 Information Security Engineer Interview Questions & Answers

Information Security/ InfoSec is a highly popular trend in technology world. There is a growing demand for Information Security/ InfoSec Engineer jobs in IT Industry. This book contains Information Security Engineer interview questions that an interviewer asks. Each question is accompanied with an answer so that you can prepare for job interview in short time.We have compiled this list after attending dozens of technical interviews in top-notch companies like- Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon etc.Often, these questions and concepts are used in our daily work. But these are most helpful when an Interviewer is trying to test your deep knowledge of Information Security.

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Application Security Engineer Interview Questions

Explain The Brute Force Attack How To Prevent It

It is a trial-and-error method to find out the right password or PIN. Hackers repetitively try all the combinations of credentials. In many cases, brute force attacks are automated where the software automatically works to login with credentials. There are ways to prevent Brute Force attacks. They are:

• Setting password length.
• Set limit on login failures.

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Why Is Dns Monitoring Important

The Domain Name System is a technology that converts human-readable domain names into computer-readable IP addresses. It allows websites to be hosted under a simple-to-remember domain name.

DNS monitoring is the process of checking DNS records to verify that traffic is appropriately routed to your websites, digital communications, services, and other endpoints.

How To Prepare For The Interview

The first thing you should do when you prepare for the interview is to make sure that your technical knowledge is absolutely on point. Be prepared to answer any possible questions, especially those that are relevant to extreme situations that you may never have encountered in your career.

Think of the interview as an exam where knowing exactly what to do when you find a problem is not enough, and you must be able to explain using the correct terminology. Review your university books or other reference material.

Lastly, research the company and try to assess the level of risk of a cyber attack and what are the potential damages that a breach in the security system could cause.

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What Is An Easy Way To Configure A Network To Allow Only A Single Computer To Login On A Particular Jack

Sticky ports are one of the network admins best friends and worst headaches. They allow you to set up your network so that each port on a switch only permits one computer to connect on that port by locking it to a particular MAC address. If any other computer plugs into that port, the port shuts down and you receive a call that they cant connect anymore. If you were the one that originally ran all the network connections then this isnt a big issue, and likewise, if it is a predictable pattern, then it also isnt an issue. However, if youre working in a hand-me-down network where chaos is the norm, then you might end up spending a while toning out exactly what they are connecting to.

What Are The Seven Layers Of The Osi Model

The main objective of the OSI model is to process the communication between two endpoints in a network.

The seven open systems interconnection layers are listed below:

• Application layer – It allows users to communicate with network/application whenever required to perform network-related operations.
• Presentation layer – It manages encryption and decryption of data required for the application layer. It translates or formats data for the application layer based on the syntax of the application that accepts.
• Session layer – It determines the period of a system that waits for other applications to respond.
• Transport layer – It is used for sending data across a network and also offers error checking practices and data flow controls.
• Network layer – It is used to transfer data to and fro through another network.
• Data-link layer – It handles the flow of data to and fro in a network. It also controls problems that occur due to bit transmission errors.
• Physical layer – It transfers the computer bits from one device to another through the network. It also controls how physical connections are set up to the network and also bits represented into signals while transmitting either optically, electrically, or radio waves.

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Question #: Describe Your Home Networking Setup

How to answer: This is an opportunity to show the interviewers how you protect your personal data, which may offer insights about how you use logic to make decisions. Describe what software you use and any extra preventative measures you take, making sure to explain not just what choices you make at home but why.

If You Were Going To Break Into A Database

And heres other side of the coin: learning to break into your own systems so that you can pentest them yourself. While the exact methods are different for each type of database server and programming language, the easiest attack vector to test for first is an SQL injection technique. For example, if the input fields are not sterilized, just entering a specific set of symbols into a form field may be enough to get back data. Alternatively, depending again on how the site is written, using a specially crafted URL may be enough to get back data as well. Footprinting the server ahead of time can help in this task if it isnt one you built yourself.

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What Is The Difference Between Black Hat White Hat And Grey Hat Hackers

• A black-hat hacker is a person who tries to obtain unauthorized access into a system or a network to steal information for malicious purposes.
• White-hat hackers are also known as ethical hackers they are well-versed with ethical hacking tools, methodologies, and tactics for securing organization data. They try to detect and fix vulnerabilities and security holes in the systems. Many top companies recruit white hat hackers.
• A grey hat hacker is a computer security expert who may violate ethical standards or rules sometimes but does not have the malicious intent of a black hat hacker.

System Security Hardening Techniques

In general, system hardening describes a set of tools and procedures for managing vulnerabilities in an organizations systems, applications, firmware, and other components.

The goal of system hardening is to lower security risks by lowering possible assaults and compressing the attack surface of the system.

The many forms of system hardening are as follows:

Hardening of

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What Are The Different Layers Of The Osi Model

OSI model was introduced by the International Organization for Standardization for different computer systems to communicate with each other using standard protocols.

Below are the various layers of the OSI model:

• Physical layer: This layer allows the transmission of raw data bits over a physical medium.
• Datalink layer: This layer determines the format of the data in the network.
• Network layer: It tells which path the data will take.
• Transport layer: This layer allows the transmission of data using TCP/UDP protocols.
• Session layer: It controls sessions and ports to maintain the connections in the network.
• Presentation layer: Data encryptions happen in this layer, and it ensures that the data is in a usable/presentable format.
• Application layer: This is where the user interacts with the application.

Explain Social Network Phishing

Phishing is a cybercrime technique in which attackers disguise fraudulent communications as legitimate or trustworthy in order to steal sensitive data or install malware on a targets device. Social network phishing, sometimes also referred to as angler phishing, harnesses notifications or messaging features on social media to lure targets.

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Information Security Analyst Interview Questions

Picture this, the big company you were dreaming of working for just opened a vacancy for an information security analyst. Your strong educational background and the experience that you gained in the field over the last ten years will land you the interview, and youre confident that you possess all the knowledge and skills to excel in that job.

But, you are a bit nervous because you havent been interviewed in such a long time, and you dont really know what to expect.

Luckily youve landed on this page! Today Im going to list the most common Information Security Analyst Interview Questions, and more importantly, the best ways to answer them.

So, get ready to nail that interview?

What Is Referred To As A Man

A man-in-the-middle attack occurs when a bad actor interferes with communications between two parties and monitors or manipulates the traffic traveling between them. Man-in-the-middle attackers are able to passively eavesdrop on the connection or actively intercept the connection in order to reroute traffic to another destination. The goal of such attacks may be to steal information or corrupt data, among other motivations.

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What Tools And Techniques Should A Security Engineer Be Familiar With

Like many developed areas of technology, there are a plethora of tools available to security engineers. These include frameworks, libraries, and other tools used to track, defend, and determine the probable causes of security breaches.

In addition to tools, security engineers need to understand more domain specific issues. These include social engineering, phishing, buffer overflows, XSS, zero-days, and Metasploit. They should have a good knowledge of administrative tools, firewalls, antivirus solutions, and threat modeling. Finally, an understanding of Intrusion Detection Systems/Intrusion Prevention Systems or Security Information and Event Management systems is required on a daily basis.

Why Are Internal Threats Oftentimes More Successful Than External Threats

When you see something day in and day out, even if it shocks you at first, you tend to get used to it. This means that if you see somebody that pokes around day after day, month after month, you might get used to the fact that hes just curious. You let your guard down, and dont react as quickly to possible threats. On the other hand, say you have an annoyed employee that is soon to be fired and wants to show his soon to be former employer that he can bring them down. So he sells his still active credentials and key card to a local group that specializes in white-collar crime. Still other infiltrators dress up as delivery people and wander around aimlessly in office buildings, getting information off of post-it notes and papers lying around. External threats do not have access to near this level of information about the company, and more often than not do not get in as far as somebody that spent 20 bucks on a knock-off UPS uniform.

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What Is A Botnet

A Botnet is a group of internet-connected devices such as servers, PCs, mobile devices, etc., that are affected and controlled by malware.

It is used for stealing data, sending spam, performing distributed denial-of-service attack , and more, and also to enable the user to access the device and its connection.

The Most Common Question That You Will Get At The Interview

While interviewing for a position like information security analyst, you can expect to be asked multiple technical questions. The answers you will have to give are not something that you can make up on the spot therefore, your preparation will make the difference between being hired or not.

Since the subject is so complex and vast, there are literally thousands of possible questions, and depending on the security system of the company, they will mainly revolve around some specific aspect of the subject.

If you dont have a formal education, expect the interviewers to assess any situation that you might encounter, even the most bizarre and unlikely to happen.

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Explain Social Engineering And Its Attacks

Social engineering is the term used to convince people to reveal confidential information.

There are mainly three types of social engineering attacks: 1) Human-based, 2) Mobile-based, and 3) Computer-based.

• Human-based attack: They may pretend like a genuine user who requests higher authority to reveal private and confidential information of the organization.
• Computer-based attack: In this attack, attackers send fake emails to harm the computer. They ask people to forward such email.
• Mobile-based attack: Attacker may send SMS to others and collect important information. If any user downloads a malicious app, then it can be misused to access authentication information.

What Is Forward Secrecy

Forward secrecy is a feature of certain key agreement protocols that generates a unique session key for each transaction. Thanks to forward secrecy, an intruder cannot access data from more than one communication between a client and a servereven if the security of one communication is compromised.

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What Is The Difference Between Vulnerability Assessment And Penetration Testing

• The terms Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing are both different, but serve an essential function of protecting the network environment.
• Vulnerability Assessment: Its a process to define, detect, and prioritize the vulnerabilities in computer systems, network infrastructure, applications, etc., and gives the organization the required information to fix the flaws.
• Penetration Testing: It is also called pen testing or ethical hacking. Its a process of testing a network, system, application, etc. to identify vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. In the context of web application security, it is most widely used to augment a web application firewall .

Question #: What Do You Know About Encryption

If your role will include safeguarding sensitive data, information security interview questions will ask about your knowledge of encryption. Make sure you define encryption and describe how it is used to secure digital information and data. Here’s what you should discuss when answering encryption-related questions:

• Explain the primary components of encryption.
• Explain the process of encryption, such as how plaintext data is translated into random and incoherent text.
• Discuss the types of encryption tools you use.

How You Could Answer

“At my previous job, I used encryption to secure sensitive data from unauthorized access. There are five key components to encryption, which are plaintext, encryption algorithms, secret keys, ciphertext, and the description algorithm. Plaintext is unencrypted information that gets inputted into an encryption algorithm. An encryption algorithm transforms the plaintext data to ciphertext using a secret key. Ciphertext can’t be read unless it gets transformed back to plaintext using the description algorithm. I have experience using encryption tools such as BitLocker to protect sensitive data on Windows systems and FileVault for Mac.”

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How To Prepare For A Security Engineer Interview

Software EngineeringHey there!Complete Software Engineering Interview Course

Security engineering interviews are some of the toughest in the tech industry. As a security engineer, your job is all about reducing risk for technical products by thwarting malicious behavior.

Due to the essential nature of security engineering, the interviews for security engineers can be some of the most challenging in technical interviews.

We sat down with security and cybersecurity engineers from some of the top tech companies including Google, Meta, Amazon, and more to clarify what’s actually asked in the security engineer interview and how to prepare.

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Now, if you are looking for a job related to IT Security, you need to prepare for the 2022 IT Security Interview Questions. Every interview is indeed different as per the different job profiles. Here, we have prepared the important Interview Questions and Answers, which will help you succeed in your interview.

This 2022 IT Security Interview Questions article will present the 10 most important and frequently asked IT Security interview questions. These top interview questions are divided into two parts are as follows:

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How To Prevent Csrf Attacks

CSRF is referred to as Cross-site Request Forgery, where an attacker tricks a victim into performing actions on their behalf.

CSRF attacks can be prevented by using the following ways:

• Employing the latest antivirus software which helps in blocking malicious scripts.
• While authenticating to your banking site or performing any financial transactions on any other website do not browse other sites or open any emails, which helps in executing malicious scripts while being authenticated to a financial site.
• Never save your login/password within your browser for financial transactions.
• Disable scripting in your browser.