Designing privacy focused technical and operational solutions that protect personal and sensitive data across the system lifecycle. Candidates should be able to specify appropriate technical privacy controls such as encryption at rest and in transit, strong authentication and role based access controls, anonymization and pseudonymization techniques, data minimization strategies, tokenization, and differential privacy approaches. They should also cover operational controls and processes including audit trails and logging, data retention and deletion policies, secure data handling procedures, vendor and third party data management, data subject request handling, and incident response for privacy breaches. Good answers connect privacy controls to system components, explain trade offs between usability and risk, demonstrate threat modeling and risk assessment for different data types and regulatory contexts, and describe how to operationalize privacy by design and privacy engineering practices within delivery teams.
MediumSystem Design
87 practiced
Design a Key Management Service (KMS) architecture for an enterprise operating across multiple cloud providers and on-prem HSMs. Requirements: unified lifecycle (create, rotate, revoke), centralized policy enforcement, API-based access for applications, audit logging of key usage, cross-region replication, and support for envelope encryption patterns. Outline integration points for databases, object stores, and application SDKs.
MediumSystem Design
74 practiced
Design a tokenization strategy for PII elements (e.g., emails, SSNs) used across distributed services. Requirements: minimize exposure of raw PII, allow reversible mapping for authorized workflows, support <10ms token lookup latency for cache hits, sustain 100k TPS peak, and enable key rotation without invalidating tokens or causing downtime. Describe architecture components, mapping store design (stateless vs lookup), caching, and key-rotation approach.
EasyTechnical
79 practiced
Describe the core components of a consent-management system for a mobile application. Include consent capture (UI), storage (consent ledger), enforcement at data collection and downstream processing, APIs for other services to check consent, audit trails, versioning of consent text, and handling offline devices syncing consent changes.
HardSystem Design
78 practiced
Design an Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) system to enforce fine-grained access control across microservices where attributes include role, tenant, and project. Requirements: scalable key distribution, attribute revocation within 15 minutes, minimal per-request latency overhead, and compatibility with existing token-based auth flows. Describe protocol choices (CP-ABE vs KP-ABE), key management, revocation strategy, and an integration pattern that avoids heavy crypto on every request.
EasyTechnical
84 practiced
Describe encryption at rest versus encryption in transit. List common implementation options (e.g., TLS, mTLS, disk encryption, database column encryption, envelope encryption) and explain where and why a Solutions Architect should apply each approach in a three-tier web application (client, API, database). Include a note about key management responsibilities.
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