Shadowing Practice: Every Cybersecurity Interview Question and Answer in 35 minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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So if you have a cybersecurity interview tomorrow or

if you've been studying cybersecurity for a while and you want to see what interview questions we ask entry -level candidates,

then this video will have everything that you need.

I'm going to share with you 25 entry -level cybersecurity interview questions and answers from real cybersecurity professionals.

In each question, you will get the correct answer and the incorrect answer.

This way, you learn what to do and what not to do in an interview.

Now the video is divided into five sections.

Each section will contain five interview questions focusing on one cyber security specialization.

Now I didn't prepare all those questions.

I've prepared five questions with the focus on GRC.

I've reached out to four cyber security professionals each with expertise in different domains.

So for general entry -level cyber security questions,

my friend Sandra have prepared five questions and for questions focused on security operation center or SOC analyst skills my friend

Josh who is a highly experienced cyber security professional especially

when it comes to detecting and responding to cyber attacks have prepared five questions

and for network security I reached out to Royden who is a network security engineer

and he prepared five entry -level questions focused on network security

and finally for cloud security my friend William prepared really interesting cloud security focused questions.

Now after each section I will also be sharing with you five common interview mistakes

that I see entry -level candidates make all the time.

Now I've been a hiring manager for a long time

and trust me when I tell you this I see the same mistakes over and over.

So please make sure you don't skip watch the video until the end because it's packed with important information.

Starting with part one general cyber security questions.

Starting with question one, how do you stay current with cybersecurity threats and cybersecurity news?

And the wrong answer is?

Yeah, so I just scroll through Twitter and see what people are talking about.

If something big happens, I usually find out since someone will eventually tell me about it.

The correct answer would be?

So I subscribe to threat intelligence feeds like CISA and Krebs on Security.

I also actively follow CVE announcements and participate in cybersecurity communities like the Reddit NetSec and OWASP.

And I also run my own home lab environments to test emerging threats

so I can understand them hands -on and get some hands -on experience as well.

Question number two, explain the difference between a vulnerability, a threat, and risk.

And the wrong answer is?

I mean, they're all basically the same thing.

And the correct answer is?

So a vulnerability is a weakness in a system.

A threat is something that can exploit that vulnerability.

And the risk is the potential impact if that threat was successful.

For example, if an unpatched server is a vulnerability, ransomware is the threat, and the risk is data loss and downtime.

Question 3 is a practical question, so walk me through the steps that you will take to investigate a phishing incident.

And the wrong answer is?

I'd probably just tell the user to delete the email and move on.

It happens every day, so I can't respond to every single user that gets a phishing email.

And the correct answer is?

Okay, so first I'd isolate the affected user and then collect the email headers and content, and then I'd check the sender domain,

any links, any attachments that are in the email, using sandboxing tools.

If there is a compromise suspected, then I'll also review login activity for suspicious access, reset credentials, and also scan for persistence.

And then finally, I'd have to document all this into an incident

and deploy awareness messaging to prevent any reoccurrence for other future users that might be getting the same email.

Question number four is what would you do if you detect an alert at 2 a .m.?

And the wrong answer is...

I usually wait until morning unless it looks serious.

I mean, someone more senior on the team will eventually answer the alert before I ever do.

And the correct answer is...

Yeah, so this will depend on the severity classification.

So for critical alerts tied to high -risk assets, typically for these, I'll immediately investigate using any logs or SIM queries.

And if confirmed, then I'll follow the escalation runbook and notify the on -call team

and then for lower priority alerts i'll usually log them

and batch them for review during scheduled response hours question number five is tell me about a time

when you had to explain something technical to a non -technical stakeholder

and the wrong answer is uh i just told them they wouldn't understand

so i didn't even bother to explain and just handled it myself

and the correct answer is

so in a previous role a manager was frustrated about multi -factor authentication delays and instead of going deep into authentication protocols,

I basically explained to them that MFA acts like a second lock on their door.

It adds a few seconds but prevents any costly break -ins.

Then they immediately understood the trade -off and supported enforcing MFA org -wide.

So those are really common questions that we ask sometimes to just get to know the candidates,

how they talk, how they think and obviously Sandra was joking with some of those incorrect answers.

Now the first mistake that candidates make all the time

that I don't want you to make

which is really don't go to the interview unprepared and by preparation I mean know yourself stuff.

For example, the question about the difference between a vulnerability and a threat and a risk.

Really, really basic stuff.

And you'd be surprised how many candidates get that wrong.

Now as an entry level candidate, I always recommend that you do something like the Google Cyber Security set.

Why?

Because it actually covers all of these beginner concepts in an easy to understand manner.

They go into detail into these definitions, but they also teach you things like operating systems and networking, which are really common interview questions as well.

You can't bluff your way into the interview because we will quickly know whether you know your stuff or not.

And as an entry -level candidate, the Google Cybersecurity Cert actually gives you 30 % discount to get the CompTIA Security Plus,

which is a good combination that covers a lot of the concepts that we ask about in interviews.

I'll leave a link to all the resources in the description box below, so keep an eye out for any discounts or any offers.

Now part two of this video, we're gonna cover questions focused on Security Operations Center and the defensive side of cybersecurity.

However, remember, these are not advanced questions.

These are entry -level questions.

And for that, my friend

Josh has prepared the questions and answers.

Question number one, what are the key differences between patch management and vulnerability management?

And how do they work together in a cybersecurity program?

And the wrong answer is?

Yeah, so the key differences between patch management and vulnerability management, patch management just means applying the patches on the different computers,

where vulnerability management means remediating the vulnerabilities

and these things come together to make the environment more secure

and the correct answer is yeah so the key differences between vulnerability management

and patch management so patches are pretty much always counted as vulnerabilities it's

when an update or something comes out for an os

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or a platform you apply a patch to it to kind of like fix the hole

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or remediate whatever happened where vulnerabilities are not always patches vulnerabilities can be misconfigurations in an operating system, an open port on a firewall,

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some out -of -date software.

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It can be many different things.

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So patches are like a subset of vulnerabilities and patch management

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and vulnerability management come together to help reduce the overall risk of the organization

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and keep it low through like an iterative patch management and vulnerability management life cycle.

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Question number two, walk me through how you would detect and monitor cyber threats in a security

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Operations Center, what tools and frameworks would you use?

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And the incorrect answer is?

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Yeah, so to monitor and detect potential threats in a SOC, we would use our SIM, we'd configure alert rules in there,

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and then when an alert got triggered, we would just respond to it.

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And then as far as frameworks go, we would probably just stick to NIST.

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And the correct and better answer is?

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Yeah, so how I would monitor, detect, and respond to potential threats in the Security Operations Center, as well as what frameworks I might utilize.

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So in my personal environment, I use an EDR platform as well as a SIM, EDR being Endpoint Detection Response, and then SIM being

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Security Information and Event Management System.

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So basically the EDR platform, we use Microsoft Defender for Endpoints,

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and we will install an agent on all the end user devices as well as the servers.

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And these will collect logs and will send them to a centralized repository, which will be forwarded to the SIM and then both the EDR platform

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and the sim has the ability to look at the logs like at a holistic level

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and correlate events that are happening and

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if something anomalous comes up we have the ability to spin up an alert

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and the alert can be created like either in the EDR platform

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or the sim we typically will use the sim as a more centralized area for incident management

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and as far as working incidents we'll stick to NIST 861 the incident response the computer incident response lifecycle.

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Pretty much all security incidents can be handled with this.

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It basically goes like detection and then the analysis of the incident to make sure it's like a true positive.

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And then you move on to like the containment

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and eradication of it and then the recovery phase

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and then a postmortem to see like what you can fix and make it better in the future.

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Question number three, tell me about the time

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when you had to respond to a cybersecurity incident and what was the outcome of that?

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And the wrong answer is?

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Yeah, so responding to an incident.

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One time at work, one of our virtual machines was exposed to the internet

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and some hackers brute forced it and got logged into it

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and ended up spreading crypto miner like ransomware all throughout the network.

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We ended up getting a warning from Microsoft saying that there was Moses traffic coming from our organization.

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In the end, I think we had to just delete a bunch of virtual machines

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and then write a letter back to Microsoft.

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And the correct answer would be?

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Yeah, so a time when I had to respond to a cybersecurity incident.

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So one time in our Azure subscription, one of the main network security groups, it's kind of like a firewall, had a misconfiguration in it.

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And it was allowing all kinds of traffic inbound and outbound.

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It was like a total, total mistake.

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But eventually, of course, a lot of the virtual machines in our subscription were discovered on the public Internet.

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And this happened really fast.

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Like a brute force attack happened somebody got logged into one of the virtual machines

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and then they spread laterally throughout the network and they installed crypto miners on probably like

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it was like five virtual machines

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and after this very quickly those five virtual machines would launch attacks outbound to the network

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and they were attacking all sorts of different organizations

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and microsoft actually noticed this because the organizations reported it and they sent a warning

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to my personal email saying that we need to stop that

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or the sub the whole subscription is going to be brought down, which had over like about 350 virtual machines inside of it,

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as well as like almost a thousand users.

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So very quickly, the task at hand was to immediately quarantine everything

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and stop the inbound and outbound traffic as soon as possible.

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So this basically involved me making an inbound firewall rule on

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the network security group to prevent almost all traffic inbound

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and then the outbound traffic was heavily heavily limited to tcp port 443

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and then a couple other ports that were required

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and then after this initial quarantine um

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i led an investigation to figure out like where the actual

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like uh compromise happened like the port of entry how far everything spread

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and then what actually ended up getting affected

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and then after everything was identified the machines were not really critical to what we were doing they're not business critical.

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So we could easily like immediately shut them down and just wipe the virtual machines.

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And then after everything was wiped, the firewall rules were verified that the inbound and outbound traffic was as it was supposed to be.

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And then Microsoft was alerted of our remediation efforts and then operations returned to normal.

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Question number four, how would you prioritize and communicate security risks to non -technical stakeholders?

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And the wrong answer is?

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Yeah.

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So to prioritize and communicate security risks to a non -technical audience, we just do our best to use words that they're more likely to understand,

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like less technical jargon.

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We try to dumb it down as much as possible with the hopes that they understand.

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And the correct answer is?

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So to prioritize and communicate security risks to non -technical stakeholders and leadership, basically it just comes down to speaking their language.

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And in order to do that, you have to understand what those particular groups of people care about.

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So generally speaking for non -technical people,

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you just want to relate what you're saying to some kind of easy to understand real life scenario the best

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you can and then in terms of elite leadership

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and then in terms of leadership

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and especially senior leadership you want to quantify everything you're saying like put a dollar amount

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or some kind of number on it

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so they can understand they have to understand things at a really high level

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and you can't be talking about like binaries like like really specific vulnerabilities

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and stuff like that you have to like equate it to like the big picture

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and put a number on it and then how it will affect the business from like a quantitative or a numbers standpoint.

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Question number five, how do you see AI used to enhance cybersecurity defenses

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and what potential risks would it introduce to the environment?

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And the wrong answer is?

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Yeah, so how I see AI being used to enhance cyber defense and the associated risks,

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there's definitely going to be a lot of companies coming out with solutions

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that use AI and machine learning to quickly find anomalies and raise alerts faster than a human analyst would.

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And as far as risks go, I think a lot of jobs are at risk of being taken over by AI and machine learning,

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especially in cybersecurity.

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I've been seeing a lot on Reddit about this lately.

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And the correct answer is?

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Yeah, so how I see AI enhancing cyber defenses?

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I'm actually experimenting with this quite a bit.

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I created a cybersecurity AI agent that uses ChatGPT's API endpoint

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that will do a threat hunt against really large log sets

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and try to correlate the data and see if anything anomalous or malicious comes out in the logs.

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And I've come to find that it can analyze the logs

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and create a threat report like 200 to 300 times faster than a human can do it, depending on the model that you use.

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And it just works really, really well.

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So there's a lot of applications for LLMs.

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And as far as generative AI goes, there's a lot of applications for this as well.

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But one of the ones that really stands out to me is being able to do really customized phishing campaigns.

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You can prompt the AI to have it do certain scenarios

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or certain levels of difficulty with different typos

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or try to make it really, really hard

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and we'll craft like a phishing campaign email

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and you can use those to like test your users and then test your security awareness training and security posture.

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But as far as risks go, there's a lot of risks as well.

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Like some of them, when it comes to my, the agentic AI that I built for threat hunting,

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like some of the risks around that are you have to provide guardrails for it

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because if you just let the agent do whatever, it might end up spending too much money

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if it uses the wrong model or

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if it analyzes like.. really huge data set

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that doesn't need to be analyzed um you could have excessive spend some other risks are depending

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if you're like in -housing the model like

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if you're using like i forget what it's called

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but like open ai for azure for example where you can

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in -house the model versus using open ai's like their model

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like you don't want to be sending user data to

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that public endpoint model because you don't you don't know what they're doing with it right

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so you need to be considerate of that, like where you're sending the data, right?

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And you need to be considerate of what kind of data that you're sending to the model.

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Or if you're like training the model,

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you don't really want to send PII to it or like some other data that could get you in trouble.

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There's just a lot to worry about in terms of like data privacy and guardrails.

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But yeah, that's been my experience with it.

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So I think people are going to use generative AI specifically and large language models a lot for analysis in the future.

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So I really like the way that

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Josh has framed his answers, both the incorrect and the correct.

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And if you noticed, a lot of the incorrect answers were actually correct.

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However, the good answer was a lot better because in many instances, it actually had a lot of details.

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And those details show that you have done the work.

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Which brings me to the second big mistakes that people make in cybersecurity interviews,

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which is just learning theory if someone have just learned theory through multiple choice based certifications and questions and answers, usually they answer the way that

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Josh answered the wrong way, which is they have surface level answers and they probably have memorized them however, if you notice the way

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Josh answered in a good way, he gave you a lot more details so when he talked about a cyber security incident he investigated,

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he showed you a real example where he followed methodology

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he was able to tell you precisely what framework he used and what he used it for.

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This is not something that you can memorize.

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This is something that you have to do it practically.

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And the way to do that is by doing practical hands -on training that I talk about in my videos.

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You cannot theorize your way into a cyber security job.

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It's really easy for me

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or any hiring manager to quickly find out whether you've done the work practically or you've just memorized stuff.

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Now if you haven't worked in a security operation center and you don't have an example of an incident,

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you can share an example of an incident that you've done in a practical hands -on lab using platforms that I recommend.

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I covered all of this practical hands -on training in this video.

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Please check it out and make sure you do everything in the video

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if you want to have the confidence to pass cybersecurity interviews.

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Now in part 3 of the video, I will share with you 5 cybersecurity GRC questions that we ask for entry -level candidates.

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However, please note that these questions we also ask for general cybersecurity jobs.

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So even if the job is not GRC, those are basic foundational knowledge that everyone in cybersecurity should know the answer to.

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Let's unpack it in part 3 of this video, GRC.

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Question 1.

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What's the purpose of a risk register?

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And the wrong way to answer this is to say something like,

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the risk register is just a list of problems that we identified and we only updated when there is a cyber attack.

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So it has a list of things like phishing attacks and compromised user accounts.

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Now the correct way to answer this is to say the risk register is a document used to track risks,

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their likelihood, their impact, their assigned owners, and any mitigation strategies or compensating controls.

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It helps organizations manage risks.

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It also gives visibility to senior stakeholders of all the risks that their systems or organization is exposed to,

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and it helps ensure that risks are managed in line with the risk appetite of the organization.

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Question number two, what's the difference between a policy and a procedure?

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The incorrect answer is to say that a policy and a procedure are exactly the same thing.

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It's just a way to tell people to do something.

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For example, a policy or a procedure just tells you that the password should be 16 characters long.

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Now, the correct answer is the policy sets a high level rule or expectation,

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whereas the procedure tells you exactly how to implement that rule or that expectation.

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For example, the policy will tell you that you need to have your data protected by certain encryption standards.

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The procedure, however should tell you exactly how to encrypt the data

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and what steps you need to take to protect that data.

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The procedure will also have details about access levels and who can access what and the steps to implement that.

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Question number three.

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Why is compliance important in cyber security?

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The incorrect answer is to say something like compliance is just paperwork

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and tick the box exercise that we need to do because of auditors.

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It doesn't actually provide any real security to the organization.

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The correct answer is to say that compliance is something necessary for organizations to meet their contractual obligation,

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their legal obligation, and their regulatory obligations.

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It's an essential requirement for the organization to exist and do business.

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Additionally, it provides a level of trust for their customers.

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For example, providing an evidence that the application that you sell to customers is ISO 27001 certified.

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will provide a level of assurance to the customers that your organization takes information security seriously.

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Question number four is what is asset management and why is it important for organizations?

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The incorrect answer would be to say

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that asset management is simply having a list of all the serial numbers of all the tools

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and devices that the organization have without really explaining why.

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The correct answer would be to say that asset management is the process

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that the organization should establish to identify and classify all of their assets.

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Those assets could be information assets, they could be applications, they could be software, could be hardware, or they could be intellectual property,

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or even key personnel with certain expertise.

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Those assets should be classified as per criticality and sensitivity and the importance to the organization, and there should be an established process to identify

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and regularly update an information asset register where we track all the assets based on their criticality and sensitivity.

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We also need to use the asset register.

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The asset register is also important for the organization to prioritize protecting certain assets.

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For example, an application holding extremely sensitive data should be a priority for the organization to invest in protecting that application.

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Whereas another application that doesn't hold sensitive data, the organization can afford not to put expensive security controls to protect that application.

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Question number five, what's the difference between inherent risk and residual risk?

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The incorrect answer would be to say

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that the residual risk is the risk that's left after we implement something and we don't care about it,

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while the inherent risk is something we cannot protect.

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Now the correct answer would be the inherent risk is the risk that we have before we implement a control.

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For example, if we have an application exposed to the internet,

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well the inherent risk is that it will most definitely be attacked by bots and hackers and random attacks.

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That's the inherent risk.

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Now when we apply a control such as a web application firewall, we reduce that risk.

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However, the risk is not going to be zero.

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So there will be residual risk.

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There will be other risk.

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For example, we still need to manage user access to that application.

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So that's another risk.

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And therefore, we need to apply further controls.

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And in the real world, no matter how many controls we apply, we will always have a level of residual risk.

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We just need to determine what residual risk the organization is happy to accept in line with their risk appetite

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now those grc questions believe it or not are actually entry -level

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and we ask them to candidates even for jobs like sock analysts sometimes

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or even cloud security professional

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and the reason is as a cyber security professional you're expected to know what risks mean

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and how to handle it especially

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if the job is more of a generalist where you're expected to do more than one thing

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this is really common for small to medium -sized organizations where

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they can't afford to have someone who's dedicated to doing just one thing now the biggest mistake

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that i see candidates make when it comes to entry -level interviews is

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that they are hyper focused on one specialization for example i'll look at their resume

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and all they've done is penetration testing or all they've done is incident response

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or detection engineering this is all well

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and fine however as i said a lot of jobs are looking for someone who's a generalist

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so they have knowledge in more than one area

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and therefore i highly encourage you to diversify your skills and add at least GRC and cloud security to your knowledge.

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Now for GRC we cover all of this in detail in GRC Mastery

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so go to grcmastery .com have a look at it.

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It's fully practical fully hands -on with practical use cases using real companies reports.

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So please check it out to give yourself a better chance at passing cyber security interviews.

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Now part four of this video is focused on network security questions and again those are entry -level cyber security questions.

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The questions are prepared by my friend Roy

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and I'll put a link to his YouTube channel in the description box of this video

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so please make sure to check it out and let's see the questions.

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So question number one, what is the difference between a firewall and an IPS slash IDS?

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So the incorrect answer is they're basically both the same thing

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and they block hackers from entering your network and in theory you just need one of them to do the job.

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The correct answer is A firewall filters traffic based on security rules, allowing or blocking traffic, and usually sits at the network perimeter.

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An intrusion detection system usually is used to detect network threats and attacks and alerts the administrator,

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whereas an IPS can block these attacks in real time.

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For a layered defense approach, all three of them are highly recommended.

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But in today's time, firewalls come with an IDS and IPS built in, and therefore they are called as next generation firewalls.

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So question number two, what is the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?

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The incorrect answer is symmetric encryption is older and slower, whereas asymmetric encryption is the one that everyone uses today.

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Symmetric encryption uses just one key, whereas asymmetric encryption uses two keys.

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The correct answer is that symmetric encryption is the one that uses one key and is generally very fast.

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However, it tends to be a little unsecure when it comes to actually sharing the key.

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Asymmetric encryption, on the other hand, uses a public and private key pair.

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The public key is used by the sender when it's encrypting a message,

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whereas the message is then decrypted on the receiver's end using the private key.

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SSL TLS uses a good combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption.

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All right, question number four.

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What is a VPN? and why do we need it?

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So the incorrect answer to this is, a VPN is mainly used to hide your IP so that you can watch Netflix from other countries.

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Companies generally use VPNs so that users can connect into the office network.

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The correct answer is that a VPN

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or a virtual private network creates an encrypted tunnel from the user to the site that it's trying to access.

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Companies use it because it helps protect data that's going through the tunnel from any eavesdropping or network -based interception attacks.

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With regards to VPNs, you've got different types of VPNs like side -to -side VPNs, SSL VPNs, remote access VPNs, cloud VPNs, etc. Question number four,

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what are the common types of network attacks?

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An incorrect answer to this question is that hackers usually just guess passwords or use viruses.

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But as long as you've got an antivirus installed, you should be good and you don't need to worry about it.

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The correct answer for this is going to be network -based attacks are of different types, such as DOS or DDoS,

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where you've got a lot of packets flooding the network, for example.

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You've also got man in the middle where communications are intercepted by a hacker.

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You've also got phishing attacks where hackers try to trick you into revealing your credentials, for example.

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In order to evade these types of network attacks, you can have a lot of defenses in place such as network segmentation,

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monitoring, as well as using strong encryption standards.

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And question number five, how would you secure a company's

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Wi -Fi network?

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So the incorrect answer would be that just set a strong password so that nobody can guess it easily.

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What you can also do is just hide the network SSID so that hackers can't find your wireless network.

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The correct answer for this would be at start of by first using WPA3 encryption and also disable WPS.

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I would also change the default credentials on all of the routers.

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Along with this, I would look to enable

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Mac filtering as well.

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What I would then do is segment your network using VLAN segmentation and have them on different firewall zones,

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one for a guest network and one for the staff or corporate network.

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And finally, I would then use StackAx or Radius for authenticating users.

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Now, as you can see, a lot of the answers that

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Troy provided, the wrong ones weren't really wrong.

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However, to really stand out, you need to provide a level of detail that show that you have true understanding, which as I said earlier,

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only comes from practical hands -on learning.

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Now the fourth big mistake that I see a lot of entry -level candidates make is

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that they don't do enough research on the job.

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Now this can get confusing, so let me clarify it for you.

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For example, let's say you have an interview tomorrow with an insurance company.

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What I want you to do is just research what the company does and what it's all about.

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Now some people spend so much time doing this and they start reading financial reports.

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Please don't do that, it's really not required.

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It also doesn't really impress anyone.

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Just know what the company does or I'm really passionate about policies because everyone knows that you're just making stuff up.

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So you're not fooling anyone.

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Be honest, be truthful and know your stuff.

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That's the most important thing.

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Now, part five is a favorite of mine, which is cloud security.

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The questions are prepared by my friend William.

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I'll leave a link to his Instagram account.

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He posts a lot of good stuff about cloud security.

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So please pay attention.

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And remember, those questions are really common.

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I ask them for most of my entry level cybersecurity interviews, even if the job is not specifically cloud security.

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Let's go to part five, which is cloud security.

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Hey nerds, W .J.

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Pearce here.

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Really excited to be on this Unix guy video.

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I want to start with five beginner cloud security interview questions that I think you might be asked in an upcoming interview.

420

So for each one, I'm going to give you what I feel would be a really good and correct answer.

421

And then I'll give you a incorrect and maybe not so full picture answer.

422

So question one, What is Role -Based Access Control or RBAC and how is it implemented in a cloud platform?

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So role -based access control is a security model effectively where permissions are assigned to roles rather than individual users

424

and users are then assigned to those roles based on their job function.

425

So in a cloud platform like AWS using IAM, RBAC is implemented by creating roles like developer,

426

security, auditor, database admin, and then specific permissions are assigned to those roles.

427

You then assign users or service accounts to those roles.

428

This kind of simplifies the whole permissions management

429

and ensures users only have access to what they need for what they're responsible for.

430

And that's also known as the principle of least privilege, which you've probably heard before.

431

A wrong answer here might be that RBAC means each user has their own custom role with specific permissions tailored to them.

432

And that's wrong because that's sort of the - opposite of what RBAC is.

433

RBAC uses like a shared standardized roles based on job functions, not user customization.

434

So the latter thing that you would be describing there is direct user permission assignment,

435

which is an option, but it doesn't really scale and it's very hard to manage.

436

Moving on to question number two, and I was actually asked this in my first ever cloud security interview.

437

What is the difference between encryption at rest and encryption in transit and of a cloud -based example.

438

So encryption at rest protects data while it's stored on a disk or a database, ensuring that if somebody does gain access to it,

439

you know, the storage or the backup media, they can't read the data without the encryption keys.

440

Now, you might already know that.

441

But encryption in transit, however, protects data while it's moving between two different locations,

442

like from a user's browser to a server or between two different cloud services.

443

And it effectively prevents successful eavesdropping attempts during transmission.

444

Now in the context of the cloud, at rest think about your files stored in AWS S3.

445

In a bucket they're encrypted using AES256 encryption on the disk.

446

And in transit when you upload those files to S3 they travel over HTTPS or TLS, encrypting the data as it moves across the internet.

447

Now a wrong answer here might be that encryption in transit is only needed for public internet connections.

448

Internal cloud traffic doesn't need it.

449

Now that's wrong because even within a cloud environment, traffic between two different services, it really should be encrypted.

450

Attackers who do gain access to your VPC or your network, they can intercept unencrypted traffic and then they could, you know, read it.

451

It's all about minimizing that blast radius

452

if an attacker does get into your network with encrypted internal traffic there's not much they can do.

453

Question three a real fundamental one here what is a security group

454

or a network security group and how does it work in a cloud based environment?

455

So a security group is a virtual firewall effectively that controls inbound

456

and outbound traffic to your cloud resources so like a virtual machine

457

or a container and it works by defining rules that specify

458

which traffic is allowed based on a couple of things protocol port and source and destination IP addresses.

459

Now security groups are stateful, which means if you allow inbound traffic,

460

the return traffic is automatically allowed without needing a separate outbound rule.

461

If you remember one thing from my section of this video, it's the difference between stateful and stateless security groups.

462

So a wrong answer here would be that a security group encrypts traffic that's passing through it.

463

Now I've heard that answer before and it's wrong.

464

Why is it wrong?

465

Well security groups only control whether traffic is allowed or denied.

466

They don't actually encrypt or decrypt or even inspect the contents of the traffic.

467

Question four and a personal favorite of mine really important if you want to be a cloud security engineer.

468

What is infrastructure as code or IEC and what are the security benefits?

469

So infrastructure as code is the practice of managing infrastructure through code rather than manual configuration.

470

Now there's a ton of security benefits that you get from this

471

and some of them might include consistency which is going to help you minimize

472

that human error that you typically get from a manual setup.

473

Next you get version control and that means you can track all your changes and who made them.

474

You get automated security scanning if you configure it mean

475

that you can start detecting those security misconfigurations before deployment and finally you get repeatability,

476

which means all those security controls that you've spent a long time building up, they're applied consistently across all your cloud environments.

477

Now, a wrong answer here would be that IAC is mainly for automation and speed.

478

It doesn't really improve security.

479

Now, that's wrong, and it's wrong because IAC significantly improves security through that consistency and the ability to catch misconfigurations early.

480

Now, manual configurations are super error -pone and really hard to audit.

481

IEC makes security controls repeatable and verifiable.

482

Finally, the last question here and something I consistently talk about, one of the most important questions,

483

what is the purpose of secrets management in a cloud -based environment?

484

Now, a really good answer here I think would be

485

that secrets management is the practice of securely storing and accessing and managing sensitive information.

486

So what do we mean by that?

487

So think about things like password, API keys, database credentials and tokens.

488

The purpose here is to prevent secrets from being hard -coded into application code or configuration files.

489

They provide a place of centralized control and they enable automatic rotation of credentials, which is pretty cool.

490

They ensure secrets are encrypted both at rest and in transit.

491

And long story short, proper secrets management reduces the risk of credential exposure and credential based attacks.

492

Now if you want to set this up you can make use of something like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager.

493

Seriously, if you learn one thing from this video, learn secrets management.

494

And a not so good answer here would be that secrets management is just about encrypting passwords in a database.

495

Now that's not entirely wrong, but it's not the full picture.

496

Secrets management is a much broader topic and it includes things like secure storage, access, control, auditing, logging, automatic rotation,

497

distribution to applications, and lifecycle management.

498

It's not just about encryption, it's the entire process of handling sensitive credentials.

499

That's all for me.

500

If you're interested in a career in cloud security, drop a comment below

501

because I think it's really cool to see how many people are actually passionate about this field these days.

502

I've been W .J.

503

Pearce.

504

I'm now going to pass it back to Unix guy.

505

Now, as you can see, William has given you so much detail and information that's really important for anyone who wants to work in cybersecurity.

506

Now, the fifth and in my opinion, the biggest mistake that entry -level candidates make in interviews is,

507

believe it or not, coming unprepared especially with knowledge i know i said at the beginning know your stuff

508

but what i see is sometimes candidates only do one certification for example they'll only do comp day security plus

509

and that's it and then they are surprised

510

when we ask them questions about cloud or grc

511

or network security yes the google cyber security certificate is a great start however this is just a starting point

512

if you are a minimalist and you just want to do one

513

or two training courses then you are going to be disappointed.

514

Yes, some people will be able to land the job with just one training course.

515

However, most of us had to do a lot more.

516

Cybersecurity is a new field for you and you need to give yourself a chance to land the job.

517

Therefore, I highly, highly recommend you follow this roadmap

518

because I lay out a progressive step -by -step plan for you to follow

519

that will build your skills and will enable you to pass any cybersecurity interview.

520

Check it out and I'll see you there.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Every Cybersecurity Interview Question and Answer in 35 minutes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: security, answer, risk, network. This video has 520 sentences and 6920 words to shadow. The speech runs for 36:56. The speaker talks fast, about 187 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
cloud noun	/ˈklaʊ̯d/	A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
encryption noun	/ɪnˈkɹɪpʃən/	The process of obscuring information to make it unreadable without special knowledge, key files, or passwords.
cyber adjective	/ˈsaɪ.bəɹ/	Of, or having to do with, the Internet; alternative form of cyber-.
vulnerability noun	/ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/	The state of being vulnerable; susceptibility to attack or injury, either physical or emotional; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended.
incorrect adjective	/ˌɪn.kəˈɹɛkt/	Not correct; erroneous or wrong.
virtual adjective	/ˈvɜɹt͡ʃuəl/	In effect or essence, rather than in fact or reality; also, imitated, simulated.
patch noun	/pæt͡ʃ/	A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, especially upon an old garment to cover a…
alert adjective	/əˈlɝt/	Attentive; awake; on guard.
practical adjective	/ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/	Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis.
log noun	/lɔɡ/	The trunk of a dead tree, cleared of branches.
detect verb	/dɪˈtɛkt/	To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing.
procedure noun	/pɹəˈsiː.d͡ʒə/	A particular method for performing a task.
whereas	/(h)wɛɹˈæz/	In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although.
asset noun	/ˈæsɛt/	A thing or quality that has value, especially one that generates cash flows.
implement verb	/ˈɪmpləmənt/	To bring about; to put into practice; to carry out.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
bring down verb	To make (a ruler or government) lose their position of power.
build up verb	To erect; to construct.
come down to verb	To reach by moving down or reducing.
come out in verb	to be afflicted by (a visible disruption of the body)
come out with verb	To say (something) unexpectedly.
come up verb	To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I mean, they're all basically the same thing.
I'm actually experimenting with this quite a bit.
What's the purpose of a risk register?
Let's go to part five, which is cloud security.
Check it out and I'll see you there.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	you've been studying · I've been seeing
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if confirmed, then I'll follow
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've prepared · I've reached · have prepared
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is divided · was frustrated · will be forwarded

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 97 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: encryption /ɪnˈkɹɪpʃən/, detection /dɪˈtɛk.ʃən/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/, passionate /ˈpæʃənɪt/, rotation /ɹoʊˈteɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/, residual /ɹɪˈzɪd͡ʒ.u.əl/, infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cloud, encryption, cyber.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Every Cybersecurity Interview Question and Answer in 35 minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?