Cybersecurity engineer interview questions and answers

Introduction

Sitting down in a room full of strangers under stressful conditions isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. Very few people enjoy job interviews because of the pressure and formal atmosphere that they often generate. But as a cybersecurity engineer, you will be expected to deal with high-pressure situations while remaining calm and knowledgeable, so interviews are an excellent method of assessing potential candidates.

You don’t have to stress yourself out, though, as there are many different techniques that you can use to overcome your interview jitters. The main method of strengthening your interview technique is to practice some interview questions. 

Our list of sample questions below applies to your role as a cybersecurity engineer while also addressing the wider topic of cybersecurity as a whole. There are far too many example questions for us to create a fully comprehensive assessment for you to practice with, but the following ten questions should help to prepare you for the interview.

The questions

1. What is a man-in-the-middle attack?

A MITM attack is carried out when a third party secretly intercepts or redirects communications between the two parties that are communicating with one another. The attacker can inject their own data packets into the conversation, or they can listen in and steal data without the two parties realizing that a breach in security has occurred. This occurs most commonly on wireless networks where an attacker is able to impersonate either one or both of the endpoints of the connection.

Sponsorships Available

Sponsorships Available

Sponsorships Available

Insight into the question: Common cyberattacks are good to know, and a man-in-the-middle attack is important to understand. If you are asked about the attack, then you should be able to explain it properly.

2. What are encoding, encryption and hashing?

Encoding ensures that data is formatted correctly so that it (Read more...)