Cyber Security Interview Questions and Answers

 

1) What is Cyber Security?

Cyber security is the process of protecting hardware, software and data from hackers. The primary purpose of implementing these cyber security techniques is to protect against different cyberattacks such as changing, accessing or destroying sensitive data.

2) What are The Fundamental Elements of Cyber Security?

Following are the main elements of cyber security:

• Information security
• End-user education
• Operational security
• Application security
• Network security
• Business continuity planning

3) What are The Main Advantages of Cyber Security?

• It protects the business against unauthorized access, including ransomware, social engineering, malware and phishing.
• Protects end-users and improve the business continuity management
• Improves stakeholder confidence
• Provide adequate protection for both data as well as networks
• Increase recovery time after any breach

4) What Do You Means By Cryptography?

Cryptography is the technique used to protect confidential information from third parties called adversaries. It allows both sender and receiver of any message to read its details.

5) What is The Main Difference between IDS and IPS?

As the name indicates, IDS (Intrusion Detection System) detects intrusions, and an administrator prevents the intrusion carefully. In the IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), the system finds the intrusion and prevents it for better protection.

6) Explain The CIA Model?

CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability) is a common model to develop a security policy. It consists of the following concepts:

• Confidentiality: Ensure the confidential and private data is accessed only by the authorized users
• Integrity: It means the information is in the right format
• Availability: Ensure the data and other required resources are available to those users who need them

7) Define The Firewall?

In simple words, the firewall is a network security device that is mainly designed to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic and blocks data based on the security rules. Firewalls are considered the best option to protect the network from worms, malware, viruses, remote access and content filtering.

8) What is Traceroute and How Can We Check It?

Traceroute is the network diagnostic tool used to track the real path of any data packet on an IP address from its source to destination. It reports all IP addresses of routers and records the time taken for each hop. Traceroute is mostly used to check out the connection breaks to identify the point of failure.

Go to command prompt (cmd), write “tracert”, and enter any domain name after a single space, as you can view in the picture given below:

9) What is The Difference between HIDS and NIDS?

Parameter	HIDS	NIDS
Usage	Detect the intrusions	Used for the network
Monitoring	It monitors suspicious system activities and traffic of any specific device.	It monitors the traffic of all devices on the network
Performance	Must be installed on every host	It can monitor multiple hosts at a time

10) What is SSL and Why We Need To Use It?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a technology used to create encrypted connections between web servers and browsers. It is now compulsory for every website to be ranked on the first page of google and is commonly used to protect online transactions, users’ data, and digital payments.

11) Define Data Leakage?

It is the name of unauthorized data transmission from a network (within the organization) to an external network or destination. Data leakage can occur via email, optical media, USB keys or laptops.

12) What is The Brute Force Attack and How to Prevent it?

The brute force attack is trial-and-error to guess login information, encryption keys, or PIN. In this case, hackers make all the possible ways and try to guess the credentials one by one. Brute force attacks are automated and use a password dictionary that contains millions of words that can be used as a password. So, you can try to minimize the brute force risk by adopting the following ways:

• Set password length
• Use a complex password
• Set limits on login failures

13) Define Port Scanning?

Port scanning is the name of identification of the open ports and services available on any particular host. So, attackers use this technique to find out information for malicious purposes.

14) Enlist The Names of OSI Model Layers

There are seven layers of OSI Model:

1. Physical Layer
2. Data Link Layer
3. Network Layer
4. Transport Layer
5. Session Layer
6. Presentation Layer
7. Application Layer

15) What is a VPN?

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a network connection method used to create a secure and encrypted connection. VPN protects you from snooping, censorship and interference. Virtual Private Networks secure the public internet connection with the help of encryption techniques and provide shielding to your online activity from cybercriminals and even your Internet Service Provider.

16) Who are The Black Hat Hackers?

Black hat hackers are those people who have good knowledge of breaching network security, and they can generate malware for personal financial gain or malicious activities. They are clever and break into a network to modify or destroy data and are unavailable for authorized users.

17) Who are White Hat Hackers?

White hat hackers are also known as security specialists specializing in penetration testing and help the organization protect their confidential and secure information from attackers. In other words, you can also call them ethical hackers who perform hacking activities to improve the network security. If you want to become an ethical hacker, you need to go through cyber security interview questions and answers to grab a golden opportunity.

18) Who are Grey Hat Hackers?

It is the combination of white and black hat hacking techniques in which the grey hat hackers sometimes violate ethical standards, but they don’t have any malicious intent.

19) How To Reset The Password-protected BIOS Configuration?

There are different ways to reset the BIOS password, but a few of them are given below:

• Remove CMOS battery
• By utilizing the software
• Using a motherboard jumper
• By utilizing MS-DOS

20) Do You Know About MITM Attack?

MITM (Man In The Middle) is an attack where the attacker intercepts the communication between two networks or persons. MITM is working on the primary intent to access confidential information.

21) What is ARP and How it works?

ARP is a protocol that works as an interface between the OSI network and OSI link layer and is used to find out the MAC address associated with the IPv4 address. What does ARP Stands for in Accenture: Robotics Process Automation – Accenture.

22) Define Botnet

A botnet is the number of internet-connected devices like laptops, servers, IoT, mobile devices, and PCs controlled or infected by malware.

23) What are The Major Differences Between SSL and TLS?

TLS is a secure channel between two clients, whereas SSL helps track the person we communicate with because it verifies the sender’s identity.

24) What is The Abbreviation of CSRF?

Cross-Site Request Forgery

25) What is 2FA? How To Implement It For A Public Website?

2FA stands for two-factor authentication, and it is a security process used to identify the person accessing an online account. The user will get access after giving evidence to the authentication device.

26) What Is The Difference Between Asymmetric And Symmetric Encryption?

Asymmetric encryption uses a different key for encryption and decryption, whereas symmetric requires the same key for both encryption and decryption.

27) XSS Stands For?

cross-site scripting

28) Do You Know About WAF?

A web Application Firewall (WAF) is used to protect the application by filtering and monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic between the application and the internet.

29) What is Hacking?

Hacking is a technique used to discover weaknesses in the private network or computer to exploit its weaknesses and gain access. In simple words, it is the name of using password cracking techniques to gain access to the system.

30) Who are The Hackers?

Hackers are those people who find and exploit the weakness in any network or computing device to gain access. They are experienced programmers with a great knowledge of computer security.

31) What is Network Sniffing?

It is a tool to analyze data packets sent over a network using specialized software and hardware equipment. Sniffing can be used for:

• Capturing sensitive and confidential data such as password
• Eavesdropping on chat messages
• Monitoring data package over a network

32) Why Is DNS Monitoring Important?

Newly registered domains are easily infected with malicious software, so the DNS monitoring tools identify malware.

33) What Is The Process Of Salting And Why It Is Used?

Salting is a process in which passwords length is extended using special characters. To use it more efficiently, you need to understand the entire mechanism of salting. It is an efficient way to safeguard your passwords because it also prevents attackers from testing known words across the system. For example, (“QxLUF1bgIAdeQX”) is added to each password to protect passwords.

34) What is SSH?

Secure Socket Shell (also known as Secure Shell) is a utility suite that the system administrators use to secure access to the data on a network.

35) Is SSL Protocol enough For Network Security?

SSL is not an all-in-one security solution because it does not provide security once the data is transferred to the server. So, it is a proactive approach to use server-side encryption and hashing to protect against any data breach. For advanced study, you may consider searching cryptography and network security viva questions to be a successful network security engineer.

36) Define Black Box Testing And White Box Testing?

• Black box testing is a software testing technique in which an application’s internal structure or program code is hidden.
• White box testing: It is a software testing way the tester knows the internal structure or program.

37) Explain Vulnerabilities In Network Security?

Vulnerabilities refer to any weak point in the applications or software code that an attacker can exploit. It is commonly found in SaaS (Software as a Service) applications.

38) What Is TCP Three-way handshake?

The three-way handshake is the process of connecting localhost and severs in the network. This process requires the client and server to exchange the synchronization and acknowledgement packets before communicating data.

39) What Is Residual Risk and How To Deal With It?

Residual risk is a threat that balances the risk exposure after eliminating threats, so we can deal with the risk by choosing the following ways:

1. Reduce it
2. Avoid it
3. Accept it

40) Can You Define Exfiltration?

It is the name of unauthorized data transfer from a computer system. Anyone with physical access to computing devices may carry this transmission out.

41) Do You Know About Exploit in Network Security?

It is a method used by hackers to access data in an unauthorized way. Exploit is incorporated into malware.

42) What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing is the name of checking exploitable vulnerabilities on the target. It is used to augment the web application firewall in web security.

43) Enlist The Most Common Cyber-Attacks?

When preparing cyber security interview questions and answers, consider the commonly used cyber-attacks. Following are the popular types of cyber-attacks:

• Malware
• Phishing
• Password attacks
• DDoS
• Man-in-the-middle
• Drive-by downloads
• Rogue software
• Malvertising (malicious advertising)

44) What is The Name Of Protocol That Broadcast The Information Across All The Devices?

IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is a communication protocol used in gaming or video streaming and facilitates communication devices, including routers, to send packets.

45) How Can We Protect Email Messages?

Cipher algorithm is highly recommended to protect email, credit card information and confidential data.

46) What is Data Encryption and Why It Is Important In Network Security?

Data encryption is a technique used to secure the data by converting it into code. So, only authorized users can access this code or converted form of data. It is important for network security because your data can be breached at any stage in the network if it is not encrypted. In the cyber security interview questions and answers, your most questions should be on the encryption and decryption techniques and secure the network.

47) What is The Main Difference Between Diffie-Hellman and RSA?

Diffie-Helman is a protocol used whenever the key is exchanged between two parties, and RSA is an encryption algorithm that takes the keys (public and private) to do the encryption and decryption.

48) What is The Remote Desktop Protocol?

Microsoft developed RDP and provides GUI (graphical user interface) to connect two devices over a network. The user will use RDP client software to get successful communication, and other devices must run RDP server software. RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is dedicatedly designed for remote management and virtual access applications, computers, or terminal servers.

49) Do You Know About Forward Secrecy?

Forward secrecy is a security measure used to confirm the integrity of the unique session key if long term key is compromised.

50) Explain The Concept of IV in Encryption?

IV (Initial Vector) is an arbitrary number used to ensure that identical text is encrypted to different ciphertexts. The encryption program uses an IV program only once per session. The preparation of cyber security interview questions and answers is highly recommended if you’re seriously willing to secure your job in a well reputed firm.

51) What is The Difference Between Stream Cipher and Block Cipher?

Parameter	Stream Cipher	Block Cipher
Working	Operates on small plaintext	Works on large data blocks
Code requirements	Less code required	More code required
Usage of keys	Only once	Reuse of key is possible
Application	Secure Socket layer	File encryption and database
Usage	Used to implement hardware	Used to implement software

52) Enlist Some Examples of A Symmetric Encryption Algorithm?

Following are the examples of symmetric encryption algorithm:

• RCx
• Rijndael (AES)
• DES
• Blowfish

53) What is The Abbreviation of ECB and CBC?

ECB stands for Electronic Codebook, and CBC stands for Cipher Block Chaining.

54) Can You Define Spyware?

It is a type of malware used to steal data about the company or person. Spyware can damage the computer system of companies or organizations.

55) Do You Know About Impersonation?

Yes, it is a mechanism used to assign the user account to an unknown user.

56) What is SRM?

SRM (Security Reference Monitor) is a Microsoft Windows system used to implement security in windows. It determines whether access to a resource is allowed or not. MSFT Access Token is used for the verification of all user actions.

57) What is The Computer Virus?

It is malicious software executed on the system without users’ consent and consumes computing resources such as CPU time and memory. In some special cases, this malicious software changes other computer programs and inserts its code to harm the computer system. Different computer viruses may be used to:

• Access user ID and passwords
• Corrupt data in the computer
• Log the users’ keystrokes
• Show annoying messages

58) What Do You mean By Authenticode?

It is a technology used to identify the publisher of Authenticode sign software. With the help of Authenticode, every user can verify that software is genuine or contains any malicious program.

59) Define CryptoAPI?

As the name indicates, CryptoAPI collects encryption APIs that allow the developers to create a project on a protected and secure network.

60) What are The Steps To Secure Web Server?

Following are the simple steps to secure your web server:

• Update the ownership of the file
• Keep your webserver up-to-date
• Disable all extra modules
• Delete default scripts

61) What is MBSA?

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is a graphical and command-line interface that finds missing security updates and misconfigurations.

62) What is Ethical Hacking?

It is a type of hacking in which attackers understand the weak points and improve overall security. Ethical hackers get the help of different tools and fix vulnerabilities of computers or networks.

63) Explain Social Engineering and Enlist its Attacks?

The term social engineering is used to convince people to reveal confidential information, and it has three types: Human-based, mobile-based and computer-based.

• Human-based attack: Attackers may pretend to be a genuine user who requests higher authority to reveal the organization’s confidential information.
• Computer-based attack: In this type of attack, attackers send fake emails to harm the computer and ask them to forward such emails.
• Mobile-based attack: They may send SMS to others and collect private information. If any user downloads a malicious application, it can be misused to grant access to confidential information.

64) What is IP and MAC Addresses?

IP address stands for Internet Protocol address and uniquely identifies any computer or other devices such as printers, storage disks on a computer network.

MAC address stands for Media Access Control address used to uniquely identify network interfaces for proper communication at the physical layer.

65) What Do You mean By A Worm?

The worm is malware that replicates from one computer to another.

66) What is The Difference Between Virus and Worm?

Parameter `	Virus	Virus
How they infect?	The virus inserts malicious code into a particular program or file	Worm is attached in Instant messages or email copies
Dependency	It needs a host program to work	There is no need for any host to function correctly
Linked with	Virus is linked with .com, .xls, .exe, .doc, and others	The worm is linked with any file on a network
Affecting speed	It is slower than worm	It is faster as compared to virus

67) Enlist Some Tools Used For Packet Sniffing?

Following tools are used for packet sniffing:

• Tcpdump
• Kismet
• Wireshark
• NetworkMiner
• Dsniff

68) Do You Know About Anti-Virus Sensor Systems?

Yes, it is a tool used to identify, prevent, or remove viruses present in computing devices. Anti-virus sensor systems perform system checks and increase the computer’s security regularly.

69) What are The Types of Sniffing Attacks?

Following are the types of sniffing attacks:

• Protocol Sniffing
• LAN Sniffing
• ARP Sniffing
• TCP Session stealing
• Web password sniffing
• Application-level sniffing

70) Explain Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attack (DDoS)?

It is a type of attack in which a malicious actor aims to render a computer, server, or network resource to its intended users. In other words, it is a process of disrupting the normal traffic of a targeted server by overwhelming the target.

71) What is The Concept Of Session Hijacking?

TCP session hijacking is the name of misusing a valid compute session. The most common method of hijacking is IP spoofing, and attackers use IP packets to insert a command between two network nodes.

72) What are The Different Methods Of Session Hijacking?

Following are the common methods of session hijacking:

• IP Spoofing
• Blind Attack
• Using packet Sniffers
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS Attack)

73) Define Hacking Tools?

Hacking tools are programming scripts and computer programs useful for finding and exploiting the weaknesses in computer systems, servers, networks or web applications. Many tools are available in the market, both free and paid solutions for commercial use.

74) What are The Common Encryption Tools?

Following are the most common encryption tools:

• RSA
• AES
• Twofish
• Triple DES

75) Define Backdoor?

Backdoor term is used when a security mechanism is bypassed to access a system by adopting malware technique.

76) Is it a Good Way To Send Login Credentials Through Email?

No, sending your login credential through email is not recommended because there are solid chances of email attacks.

77) What is The 80/20 Rule of Networking?

This networking rule is defined based on network traffic, in which 80% of all network traffic should remain local while 20% of traffic should be routed towards a permanent VPN.

78) What is WEP Cracking?

WEP cracking is a method used for a security breach in wireless networks. Mainly, it is categorized into two types: Active cracking and Passive cracking.

79) What are The WEP cracking tools?

Following tools are commonly used in WEP cracking:

• Aircrack
• Kismet
• WEPCrack
• WebDecrypt

80) Define Security Auditing?

It is the internal inspection of operating systems and software applications for security flaws.

The audit can be done through line-by-line code inspection.

81) What is Phishing?

Phishing is a technique used to obtain confidential information such as username, password or credit card information.

82) Can You Define Nano-Scale Encryption?

Nano-scale encryption is a research area that provides robust security to computers and prevents attacks.

83) What is Security Testing?

It is a type of software testing that ensures the applications and systems are free from any vulnerabilities, risks or threats that may cause a big loss.

84) What is Security Scanning?

Security scanning is the name of identifying network and system weaknesses to provide solutions for reducing these risks. It can be done for both manuals as well as automated scanning.

85) What are The Available Hacking Tools?

Here is a list of useful hacking tools:

• Acunetix
• Burp Suite
• Savvius
• Probably
• Netsparker
• WebInspect
• Angry IP scanner

86) What are The Disadvantages of Penetration Testing?

Following are the main disadvantages of testing:

• Corruption and data loss
• Higher downtime increases costs
• It cannot find all vulnerabilities available in the system
• There are many limitations such as budget, time, scope and skills of testers

87) What is Security Threat?

It is a risk that can steal confidential data and harm computer systems, networks, and organizations.

88) What are Physical Threats?

It is known as a potential cause of any incident that may result in physical damage to your network or compute systems.

89) What are The Examples Of Non-Physical Threats?

Following are the common examples of non-physical threats:

• Loss of confidential information
• Corruption or loss of system data
• Cyber Security Breaches
• Disrupt business operations
• Illegal monitoring of activities on computing devices

90) Do You Know About Trojan Virus?

It is a type of malware used to gain access to any computer using social engineering techniques to execute the trojan virus on the system.

91) What is SQL Injection?

SQL injection is an attack that poisons malicious SQL statements to the database by taking advantage of poorly designed web applications.

92) Enlist Security Vulnerabilities As Per Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)

Following are the security vulnerabilities as per OWASP:

• SQL Injection
• Cross-site request forgery
• Insecure cryptographic storage
• Failure to restrict URL access
• Insufficient transport layer protection
• Unvalidated redirects and forwards
• Broken authentication and session management

93) What is an Access Token?

An access token is a credential that is used by a system to verify whether the API should be granted to any particular object or not.

94) What is ARP Poisoning?

Address Resolution Protocol poisoning is a type of attack in which the IP address is converted to the physical address on a network device. The host will send an ARP broadcast, and all receivers respond with their physical addresses. In other words, ARP poisoning is the name of sending fake addresses to the switch to associate the fake addresses with the IP address of a computer connected to the network and hijack the traffic.

95) Enlist The Common Types of Non-Physical Threats:

Following are the common types of non-physical threats:

• Trojans
• Adware
• Worms
• Spyware
• DoS Attack
• Distributed DoS Attacks
• Virus
• Key loggers
• Phishing
• Unauthorized access to computer systems resources

96) What is The Sequence of a TCP Connection?

The sequence of a TCP connection (also known as a 3-way handshake) is SYN SYN-ACK ACK.

97) What is Nmap?

Nmap is a network scanning tool that uses IP packets to identify all the connected devices and deliver information on the operating systems they are running.

98) What is The Use Of EtterPeak Tool?

It is a network analysis tool used to sniff packets of network traffic.

99) What are The Types of Cyber-Attacks?

Mainly, there are two types of cyber-attacks: web-based and system-based attacks.

100) List Out Web-based Attacks

Common web-based attacks are SQL injection, Brute Force attack, Phishing, DNS Spoofing, DoS and Dictionary attacks.

101) Some examples of System-based Attacks

Following are the examples of system-based attacks:

• Virus
• Backdoors
• Bots
• Worm

102) List Out The Types of Cyber Attackers

Mainly, there are four types of cyber attackers: Cybercriminals, Hacktivists, Insider threats, and State-sponsored attackers.

Source : https://www.temok.com/blog/cyber-security-interview-questions/