Security Engineering & Operations Topics
Operational security practices, secure systems implementation, threat modeling, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and security operations at production scale. Covers network security, endpoint security, secure architecture implementation, incident response mechanics, and security automation. Distinct from Security & Compliance (which addresses governance, compliance frameworks, and policy) and from Security Research & Innovation (which addresses novel techniques and research contributions).
Security and Privacy Fundamentals
Foundational security and privacy principles interviewers expect candidates to know and speak about confidently. Topics include authentication and authorization differences, encryption in transit and at rest, audit logging and monitoring, data retention and deletion practices, and handling personally identifiable information such as names and identifiers. Candidates should be able to explain why these controls matter for compliance and customer trust, recognize common threats, and describe when to engage security or privacy specialists.
Security Privacy and Operations
Covers technical privacy controls, security measures, and their operational implications. Topics include encryption at rest and in transit, access control and authentication strategies, data minimization by design, pseudonymization and anonymization techniques, secure data deletion, audit logging, monitoring, and incident response. Also covers differences and overlaps between privacy controls and security controls, tradeoffs between privacy and data utility, handling of personally identifiable information, data retention policies, and compliance and regulatory impact on design and operations. Includes coordination and communication between privacy, security, engineering, and operations teams, and how security and privacy requirements affect architecture choices, deployment strategies, rollback plans, timelines, and ongoing operational monitoring.