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.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

Using a FAIR-style probabilistic approach, estimate the Annualized Loss Exposure (ALE) for a customer data breach at an online marketplace. Define model inputs: threat event frequency, vulnerability/exploit probability, asset value, and secondary impacts (fines, remediation, reputational loss). Show calculations with assumed numbers and explain key uncertainties and how mitigation reduces ALE.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

Describe the principle of least privilege and provide a pragmatic approach to implement it for three components: database access for microservices, administrative access to the cloud console, and third-party integrations. Include how you'd verify enforcement and rollback strategies for misconfigurations.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

You're shown this simplified IAM policy snippet for cloud storage: { 'Effect': 'Allow', 'Action': ['s3:GetObject','s3:PutObject','s3:DeleteObject'], 'Resource': ['arn:aws:s3:::company-bucket/*'], 'Principal': '*' }. Identify misconfigurations and security risks, explain the potential impact, and propose corrected policy elements and operational controls to reduce risk.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

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.

MediumTechnical

0 practiced

Evaluate the trade-offs between using a cloud-managed Key Management Service (KMS) and a self-managed Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliance for an enterprise that handles regulated PII. Discuss security, operational complexity, cost, compliance (FIPS), performance/latency, and disaster recovery considerations.

Unlock Full Question Bank

Get access to hundreds of Threat Modeling and Secure System Design interview questions and detailed answers.

Join thousands of developers preparing for their dream job.