50 common interview questions for cybersecurity

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🧩 1. General Cybersecurity Fundamentals

  1. What is the difference between a threat, a vulnerability, and a risk?
  2. Explain the CIA triad and how each element is applied in practice.
  3. What are the main types of security controls (preventive, detective, corrective)?
  4. What’s the difference between information security and cybersecurity?
  5. Explain the concept of defense in depth.
  6. What are zero-day vulnerabilities?
  7. What is the principle of least privilege (PoLP) and why is it important?
  8. What is the difference between authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA)?
  9. Define security through obscurity — and is it a valid defense strategy?
  10. What’s the difference between active and passive reconnaissance?

🌐 2. Network Security

  1. How does a firewall work? Explain stateful vs stateless firewalls.
  2. What are the differences between IDS, IPS, and SIEM systems?
  3. What is port scanning and which tools are commonly used?
  4. What is ARP spoofing and how can it be prevented?
  5. How does DNS tunneling work and how can it be detected?
  6. Explain SSL/TLS handshake in detail.
  7. What is a VPN, and how does it secure data transmission?
  8. Describe TCP three-way handshake and its role in network security.
  9. What are SYN flood attacks and how can they be mitigated?
  10. How can you detect and prevent packet sniffing in a LAN?

💻 3. Application & Web Security

  1. What is the OWASP Top 10 and why is it important?
  2. Explain SQL Injection with an example payload.
  3. How does Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) work? What types exist?
  4. Explain Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and how to prevent it.
  5. What are HTTP security headers, and name five important ones.
  6. What are common session management vulnerabilities?
  7. How would you test for insecure direct object references (IDOR)?
  8. What is SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery)?
  9. What’s the difference between CSP and CORS?
  10. How can Content Security Policy (CSP) mitigate XSS?

🔐 4. Cryptography

  1. What’s the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?
  2. Explain how RSA encryption works at a high level.
  3. What is hashing and how does it differ from encryption?
  4. Why is salting important when storing passwords?
  5. Compare SHA-1, SHA-256, and bcrypt.
  6. What is digital signing and how is it verified?
  7. Explain the concept of Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS).
  8. What’s the purpose of a certificate authority (CA)?
  9. How are SSL certificates validated in a browser?
  10. What is a man-in-the-middle attack in the context of TLS?

☁️ 5. Cloud, Containers, and DevSecOps

  1. What are shared responsibility models in cloud security?
  2. How do you secure Docker containers and Kubernetes clusters?
  3. What are IAM roles and policies in AWS?
  4. What’s the difference between security groups and NACLs in AWS?
  5. What are common misconfigurations in S3 buckets and their risks?
  6. What is runtime security in containers?
  7. How would you perform vulnerability scanning in CI/CD pipelines?
  8. What are secrets managers (like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager)?
  9. How can you prevent privilege escalation in Kubernetes?
  10. Explain how cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) work.
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