What practices do you have in place to monitor and protect against suspicious malware, ransomware, and phishing activity?
Out of all the types of attacks, phishing attacks are one of the most common security challenges that both individuals and companies face in today's world. Whether you're logging in to access credit card accounts or other sensitive information, hackers are getting creative by using email, social media, and phone calls to steal valuable data from unsuspecting users. Here's where you can highlight your expertise and knowledge on how hackers gain access to people's phones, PCs, and other mobile devices. Talk about how you and your company regularly conduct internal penetration testing and training sessions on how to spot phishing attacks, malware/ransomware, and other suspicious links, emails, communications, etc.
"Over the years, I have implemented a number of safeguard protection practices at my current company to prevent phishing attacks, malware, and ransomware. Some of the practices include training our employees on how to spot suspicious emails that could be phishing emails or potential malware that could infect their devices. As an extra security measure, I require all our employees to change their passwords every month. I send an automated message on a monthly basis to remind everyone to change their passwords."
"I have found that many companies have poor security detection processes in place. Companies don't properly train their employees on what to look out for and how to report these potential attacks to the Information Security department. I take IT security seriously and have implemented an awareness program to address this concern. Here are a number of things that I train our employees to look out for:
1.) Look at hyperlinks by hovering over them before you click on them.
2.) Never give out personal information from an unsolicited email.
3.) Do not click on any attachments or hyperlinks from an unknown source.
4.) Read through the email and look for misspelled words and poor grammar. That's a dead giveaway."
As organizations grow, their intellectual property and proprietary information become more vulnerable to attacks. Even though new methodologies are constantly being developed to thwart these, hackers continue to develop new in unique ways to obtain the information they seek. Interviewers will ask you about your practices to protect an organization's critical information and stay abreast of new and developing threats. This is the key reason they are interviewing you for this position.
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Anonymous Answer
Security controls such as IDS, WAFs, IPS, HIPS, Antivirus,
Monitoring tools that analyze the logs for detecting intrusion and breeches: Sourcefire, FireEye, Solarwinds, and ThousandEyes.
EDR Endpoint Detection and response tools such as Cybereason.
User education on Email handling, phone handling.
Chad's Feedback
Great start. Your answer demonstrates a wealth of knowledge in this area! However, there is room to improve the structure of your response to ensure you are coming across as organized and articulate while you talk about the different practices in place. Keep in mind it is not just about what you say - it's about how you say it. Ensure you are answering in complete sentences, and directly addressing the interview question. You may also want to consider using full words in place of acronyms, to ensure there is no confusion (i.e. "Intrusion Detection System" instead of IDS, "Web Application Firewall" in place of WAFs, etc.).
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