🛡️ Security Testing Interview Questions and Answers (2025)
Basic Level Questions
What is security testing? ▶
Security testing is the process of identifying vulnerabilities, threats, and risks in software applications to ensure data protection, confidentiality, and integrity.
Why is security testing important? ▶
It helps prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and protects systems from attacks, ensuring trust and compliance.
What are common types of security testing? ▶
Vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, security scanning, risk assessment, and ethical hacking.
What is penetration testing? ▶
Penetration testing involves simulating cyber-attacks to detect exploitable security weaknesses in systems.
What is a vulnerability? ▶
A vulnerability is a flaw or weakness in a system that can be exploited to compromise security.
What is the difference between vulnerability assessment and penetration testing? ▶
Vulnerability assessment identifies and reports security flaws, while penetration testing actively exploits them to test system security.
What is ethical hacking? ▶
Ethical hacking involves authorized attempts to breach system security to identify vulnerabilities and fix them.
What are security standards? ▶
Security standards are guidelines and best practices defined to ensure system security, like OWASP Top 10, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.
What is OWASP? ▶
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) is a non-profit that publishes top security vulnerabilities and recommends best practices.
What is threat modeling? ▶
Threat modeling is a structured approach to identify, quantify, and address security threats in a system during design.
Intermediate Level Questions
What is XSS and how do you prevent it? ▶
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is an attack where malicious scripts are injected into trusted websites. Prevention includes input validation, encoding output, and Content Security Policy.
Explain SQL injection and mitigation techniques. ▶
SQL injection occurs when attacker injects malicious SQL code. Mitigation includes using prepared statements, parameterized queries, and input sanitization.
What are common authentication mechanisms? ▶
Basic auth, OAuth, JWT, SAML, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and OpenID Connect.
What is session management? ▶
Session management controls and maintains user state across requests in web applications securely.
How do you secure REST APIs? ▶
Use SSL/TLS, authentication/authorization tokens, input validation, rate limiting, and logging.
What are CSRF attacks and prevention methods? ▶
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) tricks users into unwanted actions. Prevention includes synchronizer tokens, SameSite cookies, and verifying origin headers.
What is fuzz testing? ▶
Fuzz testing sends random or invalid data inputs to software to discover coding errors or security vulnerabilities.
Explain security testing types like static and dynamic analysis. ▶
Static analysis inspects code without execution; dynamic analysis tests running applications for vulnerabilities.
What is the role of encryption in security testing? ▶
Encryption ensures data confidentiality and integrity both at rest and in transit, tested for strength and proper implementation.
How do you test for privilege escalation vulnerabilities? ▶
Attempt to gain unauthorized higher permissions by exploiting flaws in access control during security testing.
Advanced Level Questions
What is the security testing life cycle? ▶
The process includes requirement gathering, planning, environment setup, test case design, test execution, defect reporting, retesting, and closure.
Explain threat modeling approaches. ▶
Common approaches include STRIDE, PASTA, and Attack Trees to systematically identify potential threats and mitigation strategies.
How do you perform a security risk assessment? ▶
Identify assets, threats, vulnerabilities, analyze impact and likelihood, prioritize risks, and recommend controls.
Describe SQL injection attack detection and prevention. ▶
Detection via input validation, monitoring unusual queries; prevention with parameterized queries, ORM frameworks, and least privilege access.
What is zero trust security model? ▶
Zero trust assumes no implicit trust; all access is verified continuously with strong authentication and strict access controls.
How do you secure APIs? ▶
Use OAuth2, rate limiting, input validation, API gateways, encryption, and monitoring for detecting abuse.
Explain role-based access control (RBAC) in security testing. ▶
RBAC restricts system access based on roles to minimize privileges, reducing the attack surface and tested for correct enforcement.
Discuss automated security testing tools. ▶
Tools like OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, Nessus, Nikto, and Fortify perform vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and static/dynamic analysis.
What are common cryptographic weaknesses to test? ▶
Weak key management, outdated protocols, insufficient entropy, insecure algorithms, and improper certificate validation.
Explain security considerations in cloud-native applications. ▶
Include container security, secrets management, network segmentation, identity and access management, and compliance monitoring.