Network Segmentation and Security Architecture Questions

Design and justify network architectures that use intentional segmentation and trust boundaries to protect assets and limit lateral movement. Candidates should demonstrate understanding of segmentation strategies such as demilitarized zones for internet facing services, separation of management and production networks, separation by trust level including guest and sensitive data zones, and isolation of production from non production environments. Implementation techniques include virtual local area networks and subnet design, routing and access control lists, firewall placement and firewall rule set design for physical and virtual firewalls, host based firewalls and microsegmentation for workload isolation, secure administrative access using bastion hosts and virtual private networks, proxies and reverse proxies, and network address translation considerations. The topic covers defense in depth principles applied across network, system, application, and data layers including intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems, web application firewalls, endpoint hardening, data encryption at rest and in transit, and data loss prevention. Candidates should be able to design interzone traffic controls and firewall rules to control traffic between segments, explain zero trust architecture principles that verify every access request, and plan logging, monitoring, alerting, and incident response to detect and contain compromises. Include cloud and on premise considerations such as security groups, network policies for container orchestration platforms, hybrid and multicloud design patterns, compliance driven segmentation requirements, and trade offs between security, availability, performance, and operational complexity.