These Essential Interview Questions Will Reveal Whether A Candidate Has The Skills And Traits Needed For This In
Youre interviewing candidates for a security analyst position. One is a history major with no formal technical experience. The other has an advanced degree in computer science, with a focus on cybersecurity, and 10 years experience in pentesting and security operations center environments.
Which candidate do you hire?
If youre Keatron Evans, principal security researcher at security education provider InfoSec, the history major gets the job. By asking the right questions, Evans could see through the candidates resume and credentials to the most highly valued security analyst traits: troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, curiosity, desire to learn, and an innate passion for cybersecurity.
Demand for this role higher than ever, a trend that is likely to continue, with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting that employment for security analysts will grow 31% from 2019-2029. The following interview questions will help you stay ahead of that curvey, ensuring you make a successful security analyst hire.
Explain Ddos And Its Mitigation
When it comes to DDoS, it stands for Distributed Denial of Service. As and when the server or network application is filled with a large number of requests that can be managed and eventually making the server unavailable for legitimate requests. The requests can make way from different sources, and this is why it is acknowledged as distributed denial of service attack. It is mitigated by filtering and assessing the traffic.
Consider Soc Analyst Certification
Certification as a SOC Analyst is worth considering. Its not only a demonstration of your industry knowledge it also shows your commitment to the cybersecurity profession and your willingness to enhance your expertise. Certification can also provide you with leverage to negotiate a higher salary and compensation package.
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What Is Cognitive Cyber Security
Cognitive Cyber Security is an application of AI technologies patterned on human thought processes to detect threats and protect physical and digital systems Self-learning security systems use data mining, pattern recognition, and natural language processing to simulate the human brain, albeit in a high-powered computer model.
What Is A Dmz And What Would You Most Likely Find In It
In computer security, a DMZ or demilitarized zone is a physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes an organizations external-facing services to an untrusted network, usually a larger network such as the Internet.
The purpose of a DMZ is to add an additional layer of security to an organizations local area network : an external network node can access only what is exposed in the DMZ, while the rest of the organizations network is firewalled. The DMZ functions as a small, isolated network positioned between the Internet and the private network and, if its design is effective, allows theorganization extra time to detect and address breaches before they would further penetrate into the internal networks.
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How Would You Monitor Hundreds Of Systems At Once
No matter how fast a person is on a keyboard , being able to review information coming in from hundreds or thousands of systems at once is extremely difficult to do by hand. Fortunately, we have numerous tools at our disposal for status tracking and preliminary filtering to get us to a known good baseline. This way, we arent jumping the second a CPU hits 100%, or a ping stops for a minute because its rebooting for scheduled updates.
Tools such as Spiceworks, Solarwinds, LANSweeper and PRTG, to name just a few, can help us keep track of what is touching our network and keep track of services, hard drive space, website health and so very much more. We can also utilize security information and event management to aggregate logs and other data so that we have a single point of reference to see if something strange is happening. Setting up these tools ahead of time will allow us to react as quickly as possible when things do not go as expected.
What Is Xss And How Xss Can Be Prevented
Cross-Site Scripting attacks are a type of injection, in which malicious scripts are injected into otherwise benign and trusted websites. XSS attacks occur when an attacker uses a web application to send malicious code, generally in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user. Flaws that allow these attacks to succeed are quite widespread and occur anywhere a web application uses input from a user within the output it generates without validating or encoding it.
For XSS attacks to be successful, an attacker needs to insert and execute malicious content in a webpage. Each variable in a web application needs to be protected. Ensuring that all variables go through validation and are then escaped or sanitized is known as perfect injection resistance. Any variable that does not go through this process is a potential weakness. Frameworks make it easy to ensure variables are correctly validated and escaped or sanitised.
However, frameworks aren’t perfect and security gaps still exist in popular frameworks like React and Angular. Output Encoding and HTML Sanitization help address those gaps.
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How Would You Have Handled The Colonial Pipeline Attack
Cybersecurity is as much an art as a science, which is why the best hires are creative thinkers who arent stuck on the status quo. A great way to assess their level of innovation is to ask what the candidate would have done differently when faced with the same situation as a well-publicized attack, even if it is with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight. It gives me an idea of how disruptive their ideas are, in a good way, Glavach says.
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What Is Cia Triad
The three letters in “CIA triad” stand for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. The CIA triad is a common model that forms the basis for the development of security systems. They are used for finding vulnerabilities and methods for creating solutions.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality involves the efforts of an organization to make sure data is kept secret or private. A key component of maintaining confidentiality is making sure that people without proper authorization are prevented from accessing assets important to your business.
Integrity: Integrity involves making sure your data is trustworthy and free from tampering. The integrity of your data is maintained only if the data is authentic, accurate, and reliable.
Availability: Systems, networks, and applications must be functioning as they should and when they should. Also, individuals with access to specific information must be able to consume it when they need to, and getting to the data should not take an inordinate amount of time.
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What Do You Mean By Port Scanning
Ports are vital assets that are vulnerable to security breaches. Attackers use port scanning to locate open ports that are sending or receiving data on a network. This technique is also used to assess a hosts vulnerabilities by sending packets to various ports and analyzing their responses. Nevertheless, port scanning is not an inherently malicious activitycybersecurity specialists use port scanning to evaluate network security.
Tell Us About Some Cyber
WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017
- Stuxnet a malicious computer worm infected by means of a thumb drive
- ANU Hack happened on November 9, 2018 the hackers sent an email to a senior staffmember at the ANU. Another staff member who had access to their colleagues account previewed the email without clicking on it. Even though the email was deleted, it was too late to stop the hackers, who had already accessed the senior staff members username,password and calendar.
- The worlds biggest currency exchange company was hacked and the data is being held hostage for $6 million. The companys exchange services have been offline since the hack was detected on December 31, 2019. On Tuesday, December 31st, Travelex detected asoftware virus which had compromised some of its services, the company said in astatement. On discovering the virus, and as a precautionary measure, Travelex immediately took all its systems offline to prevent the spread of the virus further across the network.The virus in question is reportedly the Sodinokibi ransomware, also known as REvil. The virus, in its broadest function, is used to encrypt data and demand a ransom in order to unlock said data.Ransom.Sodinokibi is Malwarebytes detection name for a family of Ransomware that targets Windows systems. Ransom.Sodinokibi encrypts important files and asks for a ransom to decrypt them.
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Black Hat Hackers Vs White Hat Hackers Vs Grey Hat Hackers: Are All Illegal
Black hat hackers use cybersecurity knowledge to gain unauthorized access to networks and systems for malicious or exploitative ends. This type of hacking is illegal. Conversely, white hat hackersalso known as ethical hackersare hired to evaluate the vulnerabilities of a clients system. Because white hat hackers operate with the permission of their targets, this activity is legal. Grey hat hackers may search for system vulnerabilities without permission, but instead of exploiting the vulnerability directly may offer to fix the issue for a price. Because the intrusion was not permitted, grey hat hacking is often considered unethical and illegal.
What Is The Difference Between Black Box Testing And White Box Testing
Black box testing evaluates the behavior and functionality of a software product. This testing methodology operates from an end-user perspective and requires no software engineering knowledge. Black box testers do not have information about the internal structure or design of the product. Conversely, white box testing is typically performed by developers to assess the quality of a products code. The tester must understand the internal operations of the product.
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What Is The Difference Between A Threat A Vulnerability And A Risk
Answering this question calls for a deep understanding of cybersecurity and anyone working in the field should be able to give a strong response. You should expect a follow-up question asking which of the three to focus more on. A simple way to put it: a threat is from someone targeting a vulnerability in the organization that was not mitigated or taken care of since it was not properly identified as a risk.
What Is The Biggest Challenge That You Foresee In This Job
The interviewers want to know that there are any challenges that you foresee in the security analyst career, and they also want to know how confident you are and if you have any skill-related issues or not because hiring an amateur security analyst can risk their entire organization. So try to be confident over here, and most importantly, dont lie over here, as it can ruin your career and their organization.
The biggest challenge that I foresee in this job is, of course, understanding the workflow at the start. I have a complete grip over the security-related skills but still, understanding the organizations structure and the working environment is something that takes time and affects the quality of work as well. As I move along with the structure and the environment, I will get used to it and perform better.
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What Is The Meaning Of Aaa
AAA stands for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.
Authentication is the process of determining if a user is legitimate to use the system and the network. Authentication is usually done using login and password. For example, you will use a username and password to access your email. The email server authenticates your username and password and provides further access.
refers to access control rights. This implies every user on the network is allowed access to certain portions of data and information and applications according to his/her level in the organization. For example, a marketing person will not be able to record financial transactions. Hence, a user is authorized to perform only certain functions on the network system. Theseauthorization levels are defined by the system administrator who has access to all the resources anduser policies in the network.
Accounting is known as network accounting which is used to gather all activity on the network foreach use.Hence, AAA is a framework for network security that is used to control user access, implementpolicies, audit usage and keep track of all activities in the network. AAA helps the systemadministrators and security experts to identify any malicious activity on the network.
What Are Ids And Ips And How Do You Differentiate Between Ids And Ips System
IDS is an Intrusion Detection System that analyses network traffic for signatures of incidents/events that match known cyberattacks.
IPS is Intrusion Prevention System also analyses packets, but can also stop the packet from being delivered.
They are both parts of the network infrastructure. They both compare network packets to cyberthreat databases containing known signatures of cyberattacks and flag any matching packets.
The main difference between them is that IDS is a monitoring system, while IPS is a control system. IDS does not alter the network packets in any way whereas IPS prevents the packet from delivery based on the contents much like how a firewall prevents traffic by IP address. IDS requires a human or another system to look at the results.
Many IDS/IPS systems are integrated with firewalls to create unified threat management technology.IDS and IPS are located in the same area where the firewall is located between the outside world and the internal network.IDS/IPS system covers Automation, compliance, and policy enforcement.
Security information and event management, SIEMs help make IPS and IDS more scalable and can better enable organizations to achieve compliance, improve reporting, and identify correlations that can indicate a broader threat. In short, SIEMs enable organizations to scale their IDS and IPS data into a more complete security solution.
Some IPS/IDS tools
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Explain The Difference Between Process Guidelines And Policies
These are the most popular Cyber Security Interview Questions asked in an interview. A process can be defined in this way it is step-by-step information that helps in specifying what would be the next action and an implementation part. Guidelines are referred to as the recommendation is given to the applications or network, which can be customized and these can be used while creating any procedures. Policies are defined as the criteria for security objectives and the organizations security framework.
What Are Vulnerability Risk And Threat
You should answer this question by explaining vulnerability, threat, and lastly, risk. You can make things more convincing by sharing examples as well.
When it comes to vulnerability, it is a gap that can lead to huge security loss. A threat is someone who is trying to make the most of that gap in protection. Lastly, the risk is the potential loss that the business might face because of the gap.
For example, using the default password and username for the server in place. The attacker is trying to crack the same and then making the business suffer from huge loss.
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How Do You Ensure That A Server Is Secure
To secure a server, it is vital to first establish a protected connection using SSH Protocol, as SSH access encrypts data transmissions. SSH uses port 22 by default, which is common knowledge to hackersso use port numbers between 1024 and 32,767 to reduce the risk of attack. You should also authenticate an SSH server using SSH keys instead of a traditional password. To secure web administration areas, deploy a Secure Socket Layer to safeguard server-client and server-server communications via the internet. Intrusion prevention software, firewalls, password requirements, and user management tactics can help maintain server security.
Was Asked Some Basic Questions About My History As Well As What I Do To Stay On Top Of The Latest News I Was Also Asked If I Am Okay With Shift Work And If I Was Knowledgeable In Mobile Threats
to stay on top of latest news i explained that regularly check security news articles likc thehacker news and bleeping computer. I mentioned i was ok to work shift work. I mentioned that i was not knowledgeable in mobile threats, but i did say that i have actively been learning offensive security to improve my skills regularly.Less
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What Are Spyware Attacks
Spyware is a kind of malware that is covertly installed on a targeted device to collect private data. Spyware can infiltrate a device when a user visits a malicious website, opens an infected file attachment, or installs a program or application containing spyware. Once installed, the spyware monitors activity and captures sensitive data, later relaying this information back to third-party entities.
Whats Your First Move After Receiving New Threat Intelligence
Another scenario-based approach focuses on the first move the candidate would make or the first question theyd ask when, for example, they receive a new piece of threat intelligence or an advisory about a newly discovered vulnerability in a system or device.
For Peter Gregory, senior director for cybersecurity at GCI Communication Corp. in Anchorage, Alaska, and former cybersecurity advisor, the answer should focus on knowing whether the threat is relevant to the organization, which points right away to the need for effective asset management so security analysts can quickly get the answer to that, he says. Even if the candidate isnt familiar with asset managementwhich, based on Gregorys former consulting experiences, he says many companies do a poor job ofthey should indicate a realization of how valuable asset management is for problem solving.
Evans first-move question revolves around what to do when a data breach has compromised a specific machine. A less experienced candidate might suggest shutting down the machine and taking an image of the hard drive. Someone with more experience would focus on doing proper memory diagnosticsbecause most advanced attackers dont write to the hard driveas well as network packet analysis to determine the breachs origins. Shutting down the machine is a basic forensics technique, but its not focused on incident response, Evans says.
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