Security Fundamentals and Core Concepts Questions
The foundational vocabulary and principles of information security: the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability) and related properties (authenticity, non-repudiation), defense in depth, least privilege, and the distinction between threats, vulnerabilities, and risk. Establishes the mental model every practitioner reasons from before diving into any specialized domain. Concept-level fundamentals, not tool usage or governance frameworks.
How would you explain the Zero Trust security model to a non-technical client and propose a high-level, phased migration plan from a perimeter-based model? Cover identity, device posture, microsegmentation, least privilege, continuous monitoring, and initial quick wins.
Design an availability-focused architecture for an e-commerce platform that typically handles 5,000 requests per second and must scale to 100,000 rps during flash sales across multiple regions. Include CDN strategy, caching, autoscaling policies, load balancing, read replicas, circuit breakers, blue/green deploys, and disaster recovery. Discuss trade-offs between cost and availability.
A customer experienced a data breach. As part of the post-incident architecture review, outline how you would perform a root cause analysis that maps technical findings to compliance obligations and remediation priorities.
Design a key management strategy for a customer who stores encrypted PII in multiple regions and must meet GDPR, including key rotation, separation of duties, and cross-region access controls. Indicate where keys are stored and how services access them.
Perform a threat model for a web application that processes payment transactions. Focus on Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability: identify high-value assets, likely attacker profiles, top threat vectors (e.g., MITM, SQL injection, insider threat, DDoS), and propose mitigations prioritized by impact and likelihood.
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