Security Engineering Interview Preparation: Questions, Answers, and Tips for 2024

The security engineering interview questions are designed to test your expertise in different programming languages, technologies, and security practices necessary for protecting sensitive business data. Today, cyber security analysts and engineers are in high demand because companies understand the importance of protecting their sensitive data and are using different measures for the same.

According to Gartner, global security spending is expected to increase by 15% in 2025, hence the increased focus on improving security infrastructure and hiring the best talents. Security engineers have specialized skills and unique approaches to problem-solving to address complex security challenges that set them apart from typical software developers. 

The security engineer interview questions, the interviewer will assess your trustworthiness, advanced problem-solving skills, ingenuity, dependability, and other such qualities essential to thrive in this field. 

In this article, we briefly explain the daily roles and responsibilities of a security engineer. We also discuss the essential skills that will help you crack the security engineering interview questions. We also present the senior cyber security engineer interview questions. In this article, we present some of the commonly asked security interview questions at Amazon. 

What Does a Security Engineer Do?

Security engineers are a vital part of any tech company. They implement and enforce security policies. With adequate policies in place, it’s been up to the security engineers to maintain, monitor, and apply countermeasures, mitigation, and other infrastructure to secure the system. A security engineer is responsible for creating and developing incident response actions and guidelines.

Security engineers have to think a step further when securing systems and storing data. If you apply for a security engineer role, you must focus on securing the intellectual property held in network and IT places. It will be you who will deal with physical security, such as cyberattacks or other security.

Must-have Skills to Become a Security Engineer

The crucial role of a security engineer is to fix unsafe procedures, apply software and hardware update policies, and design access controls to various systems and data. They are responsible for enumerating, defining, and modeling all security threats.

To perform such tasks potentially, you must possess the essential skills required to become a cyber security engineer:

• Frameworks
• Libraries
• Defend and determine the cause of security breaches
• Social engineering
• Phishing
• Buffer overflows
• XSS
• Zero-days
• Metasploit
• Must have good knowledge of administrative tools
• Firewalls
• Antivirus solutions
• Threat modeling
• Intrusion detection system/intrusion prevention system
• Security information and event management system

Recommended Reading: Cyber Security Engineer Interview Process.

Senior Cyber Security Engineer Interview Questions

1. How do you ensure that a server is secure?
2. How do you differentiate between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?
3. What is the difference between IDS and IPS?
4. What Is the CIA Triad?
5. What is the difference between HIDS and NIDS?
6. What Is SSL encryption?
7. Explain a brute force attack along with the steps to prevent it.
8. What do you mean by port scanning?
9. Explain the OSI Model.
10. What is identity theft? Can you prevent it?
11. Black Hat Hackers vs. White Hat Hackers vs. Gray Hat Hackers: Are all illegal?
12. How frequently do you perform patch management?
13. Can you reset a password-protected BIOS configuration?
14. What is the difference between Black Box Testing and White Box Testing?
15. What do you mean by phishing? How many types of phishing are there?
16. What is forward secrecy?
17. What are spyware attacks?
18. What is ARP poisoning? Can you explain with an example?
19. What do you mean by SQL injection?
20. Explain active reconnaissance.
21. How do you differentiate between viruses and worms?
22. What is SYN/ACK, and how does it work?
23. Write out a Cisco ASA firewall configuration on the whiteboard to allow three networks unfiltered access, 12 networks limited access to different resources on different networks, and eight networks to be blocked altogether.
24. Do you know what XXE is?
25. Differentiate XSS from CSRF.
26. What is a server-side request forgery attack?
27. What is the same-origin policy and CORS?
28. How is ISO27001 different?
29. What is role-based access control (RBAC), and why do compliance frameworks cover it?
30. What is the NIST framework, and why is it influential?

Also, read Cyber Security Interview Questions and Answers.

Security Engineer Interview Questions Asked at Amazon

1. What are the important cloud security aspects in AWS?
2. What are the important security precautions before migration to AWS Cloud?
3. What are the laws implemented for the security of cloud data?
4. What are the infrastructure security products on AWS?
5. What are inventory and configuration management security features on AWS?
6. What is AWS Directory Service?
7. What is AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
8. What is AWS Single Sign-On?
9. What is AWS CloudTrail?
10. Define Amazon GuardDuty?
11. What is Amazon CloudWatch?
12. Define AWS Trusted Advisor.
13. What is the role of AWS Security Bulletins?
14. What is the significance of AWS Well-Architected Framework?
15. What are the notable advantages of AWS security?
16. What is perfect forward secrecy?
17. Should you encrypt all data at rest?
18. Explain the difference between TCP and UDP.
19. What is the difference between authentication vs. authorization namespaces?
20. Do you know how single-sign-on works?

Learn How to Prepare for a Google Cyber Security Engineer Interview.

Cloud Security Engineer Interview Questions

1. What are the platforms for using large-scale cloud computing?
2. What are the general characteristics of cloud computing?
3. What security aspects do you receive along with the cloud?
4. What are the precautions that a user must consider before going for cloud computing?
5. Can you name some open source cloud computing platform databases?
6. Do you know the security laws implemented to secure data in the cloud?
7. How is cloud different from traditional data centers?
8. Define the different layers of cloud architecture.
9. How do you secure your data while transferring to the cloud?
10. How does cloud architecture provide automation and transparency in performance?
11. What do system integrators do in cloud computing?
12. How is EUCALYPTUS (Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs) used in cloud computing?
13. Why is a virtualization platform needed in implementing the cloud?
14. Name the different layers of cloud computing.
15. What are the different modes of SaaS?
16. What is the importance of PaaS?
17. What are the resources provided in IaaS?
18. How is API used in cloud services?
19. Define scalability and elasticity in terms of cloud computing.
20. Do you know about Amazon SQS?
21. What are the optimization strategies involved in the cloud?
22. What do you know about Windows Azure OS?
23. What is the hypervisor in cloud computing?
24. What are the phases involved in cloud architecture?
25. How do Amazon Web Services use the buffer?

Security Engineer Interview Questions by Experience

1. Why do you want to build a career in cybersecurity?
2. What are your greatest strengths and accomplishments?
3. What is referred to as a man-in-the-middle attack?
4. What is a firewall? How do you set it up?
5. What is cryptography?
6. What is the difference between a threat, a vulnerability, and a risk?
7. What are the most required cybersecurity skills?
8. What does a cybersecurity analyst do?
9. Explain a three-way handshake.
10. What is the most challenging project you encountered on your learning journey?

Security Engineering Interview Preparation: Tips and Strategies

To ace the security engineering interview questions, you need both technical skills and a strong understanding of the security principles. An effective security engineering interview preparation is required whether you are focusing on general security engineering, cloud security, or even for some specialized roles. Before appearing for the interview, you should have a solid understanding of key concepts, frameworks, and tools used to ensure cyber security. 

The following are some tips for security engineering interview preparation:

• Master the Core Security Concepts: You should familiarize yourself with the key foundational concepts like the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, and availability), key encryption methods (symmetric vs asymmetric), and the common types of cyber attacks such as phishing, brute force, SQL injections, etc.
• Practice Technical Scenarios: Expect that in the cyber security interviews, you will asked hands-on questions that focus on real-world situations such as configuring a firewall, implementing encryption, etc. You should practice answering such hypothetical attack scenarios and troubleshooting vulnerabilities to ace the security interview. 
• Stay Updated with Industry Trends: You should stay updated with the latest developments and trends in the field of cyber security, emerging technologies, compliance frameworks, new threats, etc. This will give you an edge over other candidates during the interview, and increase the chances of cracking the interview. 
• Prepare Behavioral Responses: Many interviewers like to ask behavioral questions to understand whether a candidate is the right fit for the company. They assess your approach to problem-solving, communication skills, time & pressure management, etc. It is advisable that you prepare examples that demonstrates your critical thinking abilities, reliability, and ability to respond to security incidents calmly and effectively. 

Get Ready for Cyber Security Interview with Interview Kickstart

In order to safeguard large amounts of confidential data, and information related to the employees and clients, organizations need to set up an experienced team of cyber security professionals. If you are looking for a job in the cybersecurity domain, it is essential to have knowledge of cybersecurity fundamentals. By being updated with the latest cyber security trends, technologies, and the most updated digital security techniques, you can easily crack information security questions and cyber security MCQs in the top tech companies’ interview rounds.

If you’re seeking a reliable platform that can help you boost your knowledge about cyber security, enroll at Interview Kickstart for a Security Engineering Interview Masterclass created by FAANG experts and gain the right knowledge, followed by the required skills.

FAQs: Security Engineer Interview Questions

Q1. How long does it take to learn security engineer interview questions?

Mastering security engineer interview questions depends on your experience and passion. If you have strong fundamental skills in cybersecurity or choose to learn cybersecurity through a high-quality Bootcamp program, you can finish all these security engineer interview questions within 2-3 months, working at 18-20 hours per week.

Q2. What minimum qualification is required to attempt security engineer interview questions in top tech companies?

You should have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, information system management, or engineering to attempt security engineer interviews at top tech companies. It will help you if you have cybersecurity certifications alongside the degree.

Q3. Is cybersecurity a high-paying job?

According to Indeed, the average salary of a security engineer is $80,440 per year. On the other hand, the average base salary of a cloud security engineer is $123,392 per year. If you get promoted as a Director of information security, you can earn up to $153,065 per year.

Q4. How important is security engineering interview preparation for success?

Security engineering interview preparation is crucial for understanding industry-standard security protocols, cloud security practices, and the technical and behavioral aspects needed to succeed in interviews.

Q5. What resources can help me with security engineering interview preparation?

Key resources include cybersecurity certification courses, technical interview preparation programs, and security engineering bootcamps, which offer hands-on labs, mock interviews, and tips for tackling complex security scenarios.

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