Threat Modeling and Secure System Design Questions

Applying threat modeling and structured problem solving to secure system design. Candidates should be able to decompose complex security challenges by identifying business context, critical assets, threat actors, attack surfaces, and compliance requirements. Topics include threat modeling methodologies, attacker capability and motivation analysis, risk assessment and prioritization, selection of mitigations and compensating controls, and evaluation of trade offs among security, usability, cost, and performance. Candidates should also be able to produce implementation and monitoring plans that address scalability and maintainability and to clearly explain and justify design choices and residual risk to stakeholders.

MediumTechnical

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You are architecting a payment processing service that must meet PCI DSS controls. Describe how you would incorporate PCI requirements into threat modeling: identify PCI-specific assets and decisions that reduce scope (tokenization, network segmentation), map controls to threats, and explain how to document and collect evidence to support auditor review while keeping the architecture maintainable.

EasyTechnical

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Describe the role of logging and monitoring within a threat model. For a mid-sized web service, list essential events to collect, suggested retention for security logs, and how logs map to detection, investigation, and compliance requirements. Discuss trade-offs between verbosity, storage cost, and detection capability.

HardTechnical

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Roleplay scenario: the architecture team recommends accepting residual risk from storing hashed customer PII in a legacy data store that cannot be fully encrypted short-term. Prepare a concise executive briefing suitable for the CFO: describe the risk, estimated likelihood and impact, compensating controls in place, estimated cost and timeline to remediate, proposed monitoring and rollback plans, and your recommended decision with rationale.

MediumSystem Design

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Given a cloud deployment with public load balancers, API gateways, app servers, databases, and an analytics cluster inside VPCs, propose a segmentation and security-zone design. Include subnet layout (public/private/management), security group and NACL strategies, bastion/jump access, NAT and egress controls, and an approach to cross-account trust if you separate prod and non-prod.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

Critique an architecture that relies primarily on network obscurity (non-standard ports) and IP allowlists to secure critical services. Identify ways adversaries can bypass these protections, provide concrete attack scenarios, and propose a hardened architecture and operational controls that balance security, usability, and maintainability.

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