Organizations are investing heavily in security and technology solutions due to the rapid rise in data breaches and sophisticated attacks. A Security Operation Center (SOC), which is a cost-effective way to combat these cyber threats, can be deployed. The SOC team is responsible for handling security incidents within the company. The SOC Analyst is responsible for monitoring log data and reporting suspicious activities to the higher authorities. This could be a great place to begin your career in cybersecurity. The candidate must have basic knowledge in networking, malware analysis, incident response, and other related topics.
This article will provide answers and questions for the most common interview questions from SOC Analysts to help you get hired. These questions assess candidates’ knowledge about SOC processes, web application security, and networking.
Question 1: Why do companies need a Security Operations Center team (SOC).
Answer: The SOC team is responsible for continuously monitoring, preventing, detecting, investigating, and responding to cyberattacks. Here are some of the benefits of having an SOC team.
They keep track and analyze system activities regularly
They are constantly on the lookout for security incidents and investigate them.
They help to reduce the cost of cyber security incident management
They adopt a proactive approach rather than a reactive one
They ensure that all regulations and policies are followed by the company
They help businesses respond quickly to security incidents and threats from the outside.
They give security operations greater control and transparency.
Question 2: What structure is the SOC team?
Answer: The following diagram shows a traditional SOC hierarchy.
Today, the SOC team structure has added job positions. These are the job titles:
Threat Intelligence
Threat Hunter
Incident Handler
Digital Forensic Investigator
Red Team Specialist
Engineer for Incident Response Automation
Question 3: What are your responsibilities as an L1 Security Analyst and L2 Security Analyst respectively?
Answer: These are the responsibilities for an L1 Security Analyst.
They monitor security incidents round the clock, seven days per week, through a variety SOC entry points
They use QRadar (SIEM), IDS and IPS, firewall, Cylance and RedCloak, McAfee antivirus and other tools to monitor, analyze, and analyze cyber security incidents
They are responsible for SOC processes
They review security incidents that were triggered.
They work together with the incident response team to create remediation strategies
They assist the L2 Security Analysts and the SOC Leads in the preparation of reports
These are the responsibilities for an L2 Security Analyst
They perform in-depth analyses on escalated alerts
They protect the privacy and security sensitive information
They verify the incidents that SOC operators reported
They assist with incident remediation
They assist L1 Security Analysts with the analysis of alerts
They train the L1 Security Analysts
They deal with primary SIEM challenges
They keep SOPs and SOC processes current and improve them
Question 4: What’s the three-way handshake?
Answer: A three-way Handshake (also known TCP-3way Handshake) is a way to establish a connection between client and server over TCP/IP networks. This mechanism allows the client and server to send each other acknowledgement and synchronization packets before any data transmission takes place.
Three-way handshake: The client sends a SYN TCP packet asking for a connection request (synchronizing) and a sequence number to the server. The server replies with the SYN/ACK packet acknowledging the connection request. It also assigns a sequence number. To accept the server’s response, the client sends an ACK packet.
Question 5: What exactly is data leakage? Describe it in your own words.
Answer: Data leakage
