Entry-Level Cybersecurity Interview Questions

Congratulations! You have finally received a cybersecurity job interview opportunity. Knowing how to navigate an entry-level cybersecurity interview is a difficult task, especially if you do not have a great amount of interviewing experience. This article will hopefully assist you in progressing through each interview stage with flying colors and in obtaining your very first cybersecurity position.

HR Questions

Regardless of the position you are interviewing for, you will have to answer HR questions, also known as personality questions. The goal of these questions is for the interviewer(s) to learn more about you, including your personality, work style, and thinking process.

• Regardless of what happens, just be yourself, smile, and act interested in the position.
• Always remember to ask questions at the end of the interview. The company is not only interviewing you, but you are also interviewing the company. Do not ask straightforward and direct questions (e.g., what is the hourly pay/salary for this position). However, learn about the work environment, the team, and the opportunities the company provides. Here is a list of interview questions that you can ask your interviewer(s).
• David Paykin’s interview guide assists you in building great responses to common HR questions.
• When answering situational questions (e.g., tell me about a time you overcame a challenge), use the STAR method.

Technical Questions

Technical questions test your technical knowledge about cybersecurity and/or IT, and the interviewer(s) may ask about your thinking process and what tools, policies, processes, and/or procedures you would use to solve a hypothetical situation. These types of questions usually come in a later interview stage after the recruiter and/or HR interview(s), but you must always be prepared to answer technical questions at any stage of the interviewing process. Here is a list of common technical questions for entry-level cybersecurity positions.

Networking Foundations

• Describe the OSI model. What is the difference between a Layer 3 (packet-filtering) firewall and a Layer 7 (next-generation) firewall?
• What is a VLAN? Which layer of the OSI model does a VLAN belong to?
• What is DNS? How does it work at a high-level? What is DNS poisoning?
• What is ARP? How does it work? How do you prevent ARP poisoning?
• What is a MAC address? What is MAC spoofing? How do you protect against MAC spoofing?
• What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
• Describe the TCP three-way handshake.
• What is SNMP? How does it work?

Cybersecurity Foundations

• What is the CIA triad?
• What is the AAA model?
• What is MFA? What are the three factors of MFA? What is federation?
• What is social engineering? What are common examples of social engineering attacks?
• What is malware? How do you prevent malware? What types of malware do you know of?
• What is a brute force attack? How do you prevent it? What are other types of password attacks and how do you prevent them?
• What types of web application attacks do you know of? How do you prevent them?
• What types of threat actors are out there? What is the difference between an internal and external threat?
• What is a threat? What is a vulnerability? What is risk? What is a risk appetite?
• What security tools do you know of and what do they do? What is a firewall? What is an IDS? What is an IPS? What is a SIEM? What is SOAR? What is an EDR? What is a VPN? What is an MDM? What is a CASB?
• What is the difference between dropping and rejecting traffic on a firewall?
• What is the difference between an IDS and an IPS?
• What is the principle of least privilege? What is role-based access control (RBAC)?
• What is zero trust?
• What is the difference between symmetric and assymetric cryptography? What is a digital signature? What is a digital certificate?
• Do you know of any cybersecurity laws, regulations, or frameworks? Describe them.

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and Malware Analysis

• What is an IoCs? What are common examples of IoCs?
• What is data exfiltration? Why is it important to stop?
• What is lateral movement? Why is it important to stop?
• What is persistence? How do threat actors maintain persistence in a system?
• What is a file hash? Why do you want to use a file hash?
• Which commands would you use on any operating system you can think of to find the running processes on that system?
• Which tools would you use to examine the reputation of a file hash, IP address, or FQDN?
• What are common Windows Event IDs for Windows event logs?
• What is Mimikatz?
• What artifacts does malware leave on a computer?
• What steps would you do to remove malware?
• What is the difference between static and dynamic analysis of malware? Which tools would you use for static malware analysis? Which tools would you use for dynamic malware analysis?
• What is memory (in relation to a computer)? What is a fileless virus?
• Why do you not want to reboot a computer if you have a fileless virus?

Open-ended Questions

• Consider your current company’s network. How would you infect/attack that environment?
• Consider a normal user account in your work environment. What is the extent of their reach in terms of privileges? What would happen if this account is compromised?
• What do you think is the best way to attack a company/corporation/enterprise in general?
• How do you protect a critical database server that contains confidential information such as student records?
• List as many TCP and UDP port numbers and their associated protocols.

Final Thoughts

Navigating a cybersecurity interview can be a tough challenge if you are not prepared enough. I hope this article assists you in your career endeavors, and I wish you the best of luck on your upcoming interview.