Security Engineering & Operations Topics
Operational security practices, secure systems implementation, threat modeling, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and security operations at production scale. Covers network security, endpoint security, secure architecture implementation, incident response mechanics, and security automation. Distinct from Security & Compliance (which addresses governance, compliance frameworks, and policy) and from Security Research & Innovation (which addresses novel techniques and research contributions).
Security Threats and Malware
Domain specific knowledge of the security threat landscape, common malware types, adversary tactics, and how threat intelligence translates into detection and defense strategies. This topic covers understanding viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, spyware, propagation vectors, objectives of attackers, distinctions among threats vulnerabilities and risks, and how to stay informed about evolving attack techniques and incidents. Interviewers may probe sources used to follow security trends, how a candidate adapts testing and hardening practices based on new threats, participation in security communities or labs, and examples of applying recent threat intelligence to improve defenses.
Ethical Judgment and Security Mindset
Demonstrate principled ethical judgment and a security first mindset appropriate for authorized testing. Topics include responsible disclosure and consent, assessing legal and privacy constraints before testing, safe handling of sensitive data and production systems, escalation and reporting of high severity findings, balancing test coverage with potential impact to production, and decision making frameworks for making ethically sound choices under pressure.
Static Application Security Testing
Focuses on static analysis of source code and binaries to identify security weaknesses before deployment. Topics include how static application security testing tools detect common weakness patterns, configuration of scans, choosing when to run scans in the development lifecycle such as pre commit hooks and continuous integration pipelines, techniques to reduce and triage false positives, integrating findings into developer workflows and issue trackers, policy enforcement and governance when scaling scanning across many projects, limitations of static analysis and complementary controls, and strategies for developer education and remediation tracking.
Vulnerability Remediation and Mitigation
Focuses on strategies for remediating and mitigating identified vulnerabilities. Topics include patch management practices, prioritization for remediation using scoring and business context, mitigation versus full remediation, proposing technical fixes for cryptographic, protocol, and implementation weaknesses, understanding tradeoffs of fixes, validation of remediation, rollback and emergency patching processes, and communicating remediation plans to engineering and product stakeholders. Candidates should be able to discuss concrete mitigation techniques and operational considerations.
Network Scanning and Enumeration
Covers the active reconnaissance phase in which testers discover live systems, identify open ports and protocols, enumerate running services and versions, and detect operating system characteristics to build a target inventory and inform further testing. Includes practical techniques and concepts for port scanning (for example, TCP connect, TCP SYN, UDP scans), timing and stealth considerations, handling false positives and network noise, and strategies for large network sweeps. Also covers tool usage with emphasis on Nmap: host discovery, port and service detection, service version enumeration, operating system fingerprinting, and the Nmap Scripting Engine for automated checks and vulnerability discovery. Finally, it covers how to interpret scan output, correlate results across tools, prioritize targets, and plan subsequent exploitation or validation steps while maintaining legal and ethical testing practices.
Threat Detection and Evasion
Covers how defenders detect malicious activity and the techniques attackers use to avoid detection, as well as the indicators that reveal compromise. Candidates should understand sources of telemetry and what to look for in logs and network data, including suspicious file hashes, malicious network endpoints, unusual process behavior, abnormal authentication patterns, registry modifications, and persistence artifacts. Describe common detection technologies such as antivirus, host based detection, network intrusion detection systems, and security information and event management systems, and explain how signature based, heuristic, and behavioral detection differ. Explain detection engineering and threat hunting approaches, including creating detection rules, baselining normal behavior, anomaly detection, and using threat intelligence. Cover evasion and stealth techniques such as encryption and tunneling of command traffic, mimicking legitimate applications and traffic patterns, living off the land using built in operating system tools, fileless and memory resident techniques, process injection and masquerading, timing and slow low attacks, obfuscation and packing, credential theft and lateral movement, and disabling or tampering with defensive controls. Discuss how indicators of compromise may appear across host, network, and application telemetry, the limitations that cause missed detections, and defender mitigations such as improved telemetry coverage, layered detection logic, containment and response playbooks, and proactive threat hunting.
Security Assessment and Penetration Testing
Covers the full spectrum of assessing and hardening systems and applications. Topics include systematic assessment methodologies such as threat modeling asset inventory scoping vulnerability identification and remediation prioritization; distinctions between vulnerability assessment and penetration testing including when to use each and what each delivers; application security testing approaches targeting common vulnerabilities and exploitation scenarios; hardening guidance for architecture configuration and access controls; severity and risk rating practices using established scoring frameworks and contextual reasoning; use of automated scanning and manual testing techniques; and how to communicate findings and remediation roadmaps to both technical teams and business stakeholders.
Advanced Persistent Threats and Threat Modeling
Covers understanding how advanced attackers operate, designing simulated engagements that emulate sophisticated multi stage adversaries, and constructing threat models to anticipate likely attack paths. Topics include multi stage attack chains across systems, persistence mechanisms, lateral movement strategies, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and advanced evasion techniques. Candidates should be able to use threat intelligence and the MITRE ATTACK framework to inform realistic adversary emulation scenarios, select high value targets, and plan multi phase exercises such as red team and purple team engagements. Includes threat modeling practices such as asset and attack surface identification, attack tree and kill chain thinking, mapping controls to likely tactics and techniques, and adapting scenarios when defenses are encountered. Evaluation also covers how to measure detection and response gaps, recommend mitigations, and produce actionable findings and roadmaps to improve detection, prevention, and resilience.
Threat Modeling and Secure System Design
Applying threat modeling and structured problem solving to secure system design. Candidates should be able to decompose complex security challenges by identifying business context, critical assets, threat actors, attack surfaces, and compliance requirements. Topics include threat modeling methodologies, attacker capability and motivation analysis, risk assessment and prioritization, selection of mitigations and compensating controls, and evaluation of trade offs among security, usability, cost, and performance. Candidates should also be able to produce implementation and monitoring plans that address scalability and maintainability and to clearly explain and justify design choices and residual risk to stakeholders.