Network Security Questions and Answers aims to be the most exhaustive list of security questions, with answers. We hope to make this a useful resource for both those looking for job interview questions and those looking for interview questions.
What type of questions are in this list?
This is a broad category of topics, including:
General network security questions, such as “What is a firewall?” or “What are IPS/IDS?”
Network intrusion detection system (NIDS) and network intrusion prevention system (NIPS) questions, including “How do you configure a NIDS?” and “How do you use Snort?”
Security management questions, such as “What are some attack patterns?” and “What are some common security policy enforcement mechanisms?”
Fraud detection & protection questions, such as “How do you detect fraud?” and “How do you protect against fraud?”
Information security awareness/training questions, including “What are the most common methods for preventing attacks?” and “How would you identify threats on your network?”
What level of knowledge are these questions aiming at?
The questions here are organized into different levels of knowledge. We have several categories to help you easily identify the level of expertise required. These include beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert. beginner questions require a basic understanding of the technology and are to test your ability to apply the concepts.
Intermediate questions require you to have an intermediate understanding of the technology and ask you to demonstrate an intermediate level of expertise. Advanced questions require you to have a very good understanding of the technology, and ask you to be able to identify edge cases and subtle nuances required for a detailed understanding.
Expert questions require an expert-level understanding of the technology and ask you to be able to apply that knowledge in uncommon situations or in unusual ways.
What is the purpose of these questions?
We hope that this list can be useful for both job seekers and employers. Job seekers can use this list to prepare for interviews with prospective employers. These questions are towards security positions but are also relevant for network engineering positions.
In addition, many of these questions are equally relevant for non-security positions, such as network engineering. For example, if your prospective employer has a question about proxy chains and you don’t know the answer, you’re probably not going to get that job. For employers, we hope that this list will help you find the candidates you are looking for.
If you need someone to handle NIDS/NIPS deployments or manage security policy enforcement mechanisms, you should be able to find someone who possesses the knowledge required by studying this list. Do note that “expert” level questions shouldn’t be to screen candidates in most cases. They should be for actual interview situations after a candidate has passed a basic screening of basic and intermediate level knowledge.
Conclusion
The questions on this list are from a variety of sources, including employer questionnaires, job ads, and job interviews. While many of the questions were from real-world situations, others have been constructed as examples to demonstrate specific concepts. Please feel free to add your own questions/answers to this list. We hope that this list is useful for both job seekers and employers.