Top 30 Penetration Tester (Pentester) Interview Questions and Answers for 2019

Introduction

It seems like hardly has one cyber-threat appeared before many variants of it soon follow, affecting both individuals and corporations alike. But this is no coincidence: One of the key ways the cyber-attacker is able to act is by looking for vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the lines of defenses that are set up, and one threat often opens the door for another.

Many organizations simply think that by deploying the latest security technologies, they will be immune from any form of cyber-attack. However, this is far from the truth. What they fail to understand is that apart from implementing these tools, their entire IT Infrastructure needs to be thoroughly tested from the inside out.

How can this be done? Probably one of the best ways to do this is through what is known as penetration (pen) testing. In this kind of analysis, a team of experienced IT professionals actually behave like a real cyber-attacker, but within legal and ethical bounds.

The team’s primary goal is to launch just about any kind of attack that is imaginable in an effort to discover any unknown security gaps and weaknesses. Their findings are then summarized into a comprehensive report, supported with solutions as to how these vulnerabilities can be fixed.

Because of the dynamic nature of the cyber-threat landscape, the demand for pentesting is quite high, and is expected to be so into the coming future.

Becoming a penetration tester requires a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative skills. For example, he or she has to decipher the complex reports that are output by the pentesting tools, as well as having the patience to work very long hours and at odd times.

It takes years of experience to be a fully qualified pentester, and this particular individual must be able to keep (Read more...)