36 practice questions with answers for Cyber Security interviews in Nagpur.
Cyber Security jobs in Nagpur
Nagpur's MIHAN SEZ hosts IT-services and BFSI delivery centres, giving central India a steady market for data and QA roles. Interviews are usually service-company style, with aptitude, technical and HR rounds.
Below are 36 questions that match the mix of service, product and domain employers hiring soc analyst (l1/l2)s in Nagpur.
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01
An alert shows Microsoft Word spawning PowerShell with an encoded command. What does it mean and what do you do?
Office apps rarely start PowerShell, so this usually means a malicious macro or document exploit. Decode the Base64 command to see what it does, check the process tree and any network connections for downloads, and find the source email. Isolate the host through EDR, block the sender and URLs, search for the same email in other mailboxes and hunt for the same command line elsewhere.
02
How does a VPN protect traffic and what are its limits?
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel, using IPsec, WireGuard or TLS, between a client and a network, protecting data on untrusted networks. Its limits are important: once connected, users often get broad network access, and VPN appliances are a frequent target for exploited vulnerabilities. That is why many companies move to Zero Trust Network Access, which grants per-application access after identity and device checks.
03
A scan shows an S3 bucket with customer documents is publicly readable. What do you do?
Block public access on the bucket immediately and confirm with the owner whether any public access was intended. Check access logs and CloudTrail data events, if enabled, to see who downloaded files and when. If personal data was accessed, start the incident and breach notification process with legal. Then enable account-level block public access, add a preventive guardrail and alert on policy changes.
04
Where do you see yourself in five years in cyber security?
A strong answer is specific yet flexible. For example: in five years I want to lead incident response or security engineering work for a large environment. I plan to master SOC operations first, then specialise through hands-on cloud and IR projects and certifications such as CySA+ and later CISSP. I also want to mentor junior analysts, since teaching strengthens my own skills.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 governs digital personal data. Data fiduciaries need valid consent or a legitimate use, must give clear notice, protect data with reasonable safeguards, notify breaches to the Data Protection Board and affected people, and delete data when no longer needed. Data principals have rights to access, correction and erasure. Penalties go up to 250 crore rupees. The DPDP Rules 2025 phase in obligations.
06
Describe a time you dealt with a user who was upset about losing access.
Situation: after an access review removed a sales manager's export rights, he escalated angrily before a client deadline. Task: solve his need while keeping the control. Action: I listened, explained why bulk exports were restricted, and arranged a time-bound approved export through his manager within an hour. Result: he met the deadline, and we added a documented request path for such cases.
PAM protects powerful accounts like domain admins, root, database admins and cloud owners. It includes a vault for credentials with automatic rotation, just-in-time elevation, session brokering with recording, approval workflows and alerts on unusual use. Tools include CyberArk, BeyondTrust and Delinea. PAM is important because attackers aim for privileged credentials to move laterally and deploy ransomware across the network.
An Intrusion Detection System monitors traffic or hosts and raises alerts but does not block. An Intrusion Prevention System sits inline and can drop malicious packets in real time. IDS is safer for tuning because false positives do not break traffic, while IPS gives active protection. Detection can be signature based, as in Snort and Suricata rules, or anomaly based using baselines of normal behaviour.
Map each control to the evidence an auditor will request, such as screenshots of configurations, system exports, tickets, logs and signed approvals. Keep a central evidence library organised by control ID with dates. Automate collection where possible through GRC tools that pull data from cloud, identity and ticketing systems. Sample in advance to confirm evidence covers the full audit period.
10
Write a least-privilege AWS IAM policy that allows reading one S3 bucket.
Allow only listing that bucket and reading its objects.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{"Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:ListBucket",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::reports-prod"},
{"Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:GetObject",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::reports-prod/*"}
]
}
Attach it to a role, not a user with long-lived keys.
11
How do you find overly permissive security groups with the AWS CLI?
Query security groups that allow ingress from anywhere, then review each.
aws ec2 describe-security-groups \
--filters Name=ip-permission.cidr,Values=0.0.0.0/0 \
--query 'SecurityGroups[*].[GroupId,GroupName]' --output table
Pay attention to ports 22, 3389, 3306 and 5432. Replace them with VPN, bastion or session manager access.
Public Key Infrastructure is the system of certificate authorities, certificates, policies and revocation services that binds public keys to identities. A CA signs a certificate saying this public key belongs to this domain or user. Browsers and operating systems trust a set of root CAs, which sign intermediate CAs, which sign end-entity certificates. Enterprises run internal PKI for device certificates, VPN, Wi-Fi 802.1X and code signing.
Conditional access applies policies based on signals at sign-in, such as user, group, device compliance, location, application and risk score. For example, allow finance apps only from managed devices with MFA, block legacy authentication, and require a password change when sign-in risk is high. It is a key Zero Trust building block in platforms like Microsoft Entra ID. Policies need testing in report-only mode first.
14
What is network segmentation and why is it important?
Segmentation splits a network into zones such as user, server, OT, guest and management, with controlled traffic between them using VLANs, firewalls and ACLs. It limits lateral movement, so ransomware on one laptop cannot reach every server. It also reduces compliance scope, for example isolating the cardholder data environment for PCI DSS. Micro-segmentation goes further with per-workload policies in data centres and cloud.
15
How do you decode and check a JWT during troubleshooting?
A JWT has header, payload and signature separated by dots. Decode the first two parts to read claims, but never trust them without verifying the signature.
echo $TOKEN | cut -d. -f2 | base64 -d 2>/dev/null
Check iss, aud, exp and nbf claims. In code, verify with a library using the expected algorithm and issuer keys, and reject alg none.
A firewall enforces rules on traffic between networks. Packet-filtering firewalls check IP, port and protocol. Stateful firewalls track connections and allow return traffic automatically. Next-generation firewalls add application awareness, user identity, TLS inspection, IPS and URL filtering. Web application firewalls protect HTTP applications from attacks such as SQL injection. Host firewalls like Windows Defender Firewall or nftables protect individual machines.
17
What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk assessment?
Qualitative assessment rates likelihood and impact on scales like low, medium and high, and is quick and easy to communicate. Quantitative assessment uses numbers, such as single loss expectancy times annual rate of occurrence to get annual loss expectancy, or FAIR models. Quantitative helps justify budgets but needs data that is often uncertain. Many teams start qualitative and quantify the top risks.
NIST SP 800-61 describes preparation; detection and analysis; containment, eradication and recovery; and post-incident activity. The 2025 revision aligns these with the NIST CSF 2.0 functions of Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover. Preparation includes playbooks, contacts and tools. Containment limits spread, eradication removes the attacker, recovery restores operations, and lessons learned improve controls and detections.
19
Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work and how you handled it.
Situation: as a Tier 1 analyst I closed an alert as false positive without checking the user's later activity. Task: my lead found it was a real phishing compromise. Action: I owned the mistake, helped contain it, and proposed a checklist for credential alerts that includes reviewing activity after login. Result: the checklist was adopted by the shift and similar misses stopped.
20
Users complain that a new firewall rule broke an application. How do you troubleshoot?
First check the firewall logs for denied traffic from the affected users or servers around the change time. Compare the change ticket with actual app requirements, since apps often use extra ports or dependencies. Use packet capture or a test connection to confirm. Then add a narrow rule for the real need, not an any-any rule, and update documentation so the next change does not repeat the problem.
21
GuardDuty reports an EC2 instance communicating with a known crypto-mining pool. How do you respond?
Isolate the instance by changing its security group to a quarantine group with no traffic, and snapshot its volumes for analysis. Check how it was compromised: exposed SSH, vulnerable app or leaked key. Review CloudTrail for actions by its instance role. Terminate and rebuild from a clean image, rotate secrets the instance could access, and fix the root cause, such as closing public ports.
22
Tell me about a time you had to say no to a senior person's access request.
Situation: a senior manager asked for permanent admin rights on production to speed up reports. Task: protect production without blocking the work. Action: I explained the audit and breach risk, then offered a read-only reporting role and a scheduled export within a day. Result: the manager got the data faster than before, and the audit later had no finding on that system.
23
How do you check which ports are listening on a server you manage?
List listening sockets with the owning process, then compare against what the server should expose. Anything unexpected needs an owner or should be closed.
# Linux
sudo ss -tulpn
# Windows
netstat -ano | findstr LISTENING
Get-NetTCPConnection -State Listen
Map the PID to a process name in Task Manager or with ps to identify the service.
Forward secrecy means that if a server's long-term private key is stolen later, previously recorded sessions still cannot be decrypted. It is achieved with ephemeral key exchange, such as ECDHE, where a new key pair is created for each session and discarded. TLS 1.3 makes forward secrecy mandatory by removing static RSA key exchange, which is one reason older TLS configurations are considered weak.
25
How do you create a private key and CSR with OpenSSL?
In a MITM attack, an attacker intercepts traffic and pretends to be the server. Certificates prevent this because the client checks that the server certificate chains to a trusted root, matches the hostname and is valid. An attacker cannot produce a valid certificate without the private key or a compromised CA. Certificate warnings that users click through, and apps that skip validation, break this protection.
Check supported protocol versions, ciphers and certificate details. OpenSSL gives a quick view, and tools like testssl.sh give a full report.
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -tls1_2
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -servername example.com | openssl x509 -noout -dates -issuer
./testssl.sh example.com
Disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1, weak ciphers like RC4 and 3DES, and fix expiring certificates.
28
Developers want admin access in the cloud to move fast. How do you balance speed and security?
Give them freedom inside guardrails. Provide sandbox accounts where they have broad rights, but production changes go through IaC pipelines with scanning and review. Use permission boundaries and SCPs to block dangerous actions like disabling logging or making resources public. Offer pre-approved modules for common patterns. This keeps speed high while preventing the riskiest mistakes.
A blameless review covers the timeline, root cause, how the attacker got in, what detected it, what slowed response, business impact and decisions made. It ends with specific actions that have owners and dates, such as enabling MFA on all VPN users or adding a detection rule. Tracking these actions to completion matters more than the report itself, otherwise the same incident repeats.
30
A guest Wi-Fi user can reach internal printers. What is wrong and how do you fix it?
Guest traffic is not properly isolated, likely because the guest SSID shares a VLAN with internal devices or the firewall allows inter-VLAN routing. Fix by placing guests on a separate VLAN with internet-only access, applying ACLs that deny all RFC 1918 internal ranges, and enabling client isolation on the wireless controller. Then test from a guest device and document the design.
31
Which Windows event IDs should a SOC analyst know?
Key Security log events are 4624 successful logon, 4625 failed logon, 4672 special privileges assigned, 4688 process creation, 4720 user created, 4728 and 4732 user added to privileged groups, 4740 account lockout, 1102 audit log cleared, 4698 scheduled task created and 7045 service installed in the System log. Logon type in 4624, such as 3 for network and 10 for RDP, adds important context.
32
Leadership wants to block all USB drives tomorrow. How would you handle this request?
I would support the goal but plan the rollout to avoid breaking business work. First, find who genuinely needs USB, such as field engineers, using endpoint logs. Then apply a device control policy through EDR or Intune that blocks mass storage by default, allows approved encrypted devices by serial number, and logs exceptions. Communicate the change, pilot it with one department, then enforce company wide.
33
What is the order of volatility in evidence collection?
Collect the most volatile evidence first because it disappears quickly. The order is CPU registers and cache, memory including running processes and network connections, temporary files, disk, remote logs, and finally archived media. That is why responders capture RAM before shutting down a machine, since malware running only in memory, decrypted keys and active connections are lost at power off.
Threat hunting is proactive searching for attackers who evaded existing detections. Hunters start from a hypothesis, for example that attackers use scheduled tasks for persistence, then query EDR and SIEM data to confirm or reject it. Findings become new detection rules. Hunting requires good data retention, knowledge of normal behaviour and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to guide hypotheses.
35
A new vendor will process customer personal data. What checks do you perform before onboarding?
Classify the vendor as high risk. Review their security questionnaire, ISO 27001 certificate or SOC 2 Type II report, data location, subprocessors, encryption, access controls and incident response capability. Under the DPDP Act, we remain responsible as data fiduciary, so the contract needs data processing terms, breach notification timelines, deletion on exit and audit rights. Track any gaps with deadlines.
Use a dedicated password hashing library with Argon2id, which handles salts and parameters automatically.
from argon2 import PasswordHasher
ph = PasswordHasher()
stored = ph.hash(password)
try:
ph.verify(stored, attempt)
if ph.check_needs_rehash(stored):
stored = ph.hash(attempt)
except Exception:
deny_login()
Never use plain SHA-256 or MD5 for passwords.
Few big employers listed in Nagpur?
Many Nagpur candidates also apply to teams in Pune and to remote or hybrid roles. Practise the Pune set as well.
Which companies hire Cyber Security professionals in Nagpur?
Companies with large offices in Nagpur include many IT services and product firms. Use their company pages below to practise employer-specific sets.
Are Cyber Security interviews in Nagpur different from other cities?
The questions depend more on the company than the city. Nagpur's mix of employers decides the style: Interviews are usually service-company style, with aptitude, technical and HR rounds
How do I find Cyber Security jobs in Nagpur?
Shortlist companies with Nagpur offices, keep your CV focused on Cyber Security projects, apply on company career pages and job portals with the Nagpur filter, and practise the questions on this page before each interview.