Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About PwC hiring for Cyber Security roles
PwC is one of the Big Four professional services networks, offering assurance, tax, consulting and deals services. In India, PwC member firms and acceleration centres support global clients with technology consulting, data analytics, cyber, risk and process work. It hires for associate and consultant roles in analytics, BI, testing, ERP and risk assurance.
For Cyber Security roles, this PwC practice set focuses most on Network Security (6), Incident Response and Forensics (5), GRC and Compliance (5), Security Fundamentals (4). It has 6 easy, 20 medium, 4 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
Company type
Consulting
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Main India offices
Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurugram
PwC Cyber Security interview process
Online assessment (aptitude + technical)
Group discussion or case round
Technical interview
Partner or HR round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
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01
What is the difference between TCP and UDP from a security point of view?
TCP is connection oriented with a three-way handshake, which makes it reliable but open to SYN flood attacks. UDP is connectionless, so it is easy to spoof source addresses and is abused in amplification attacks using DNS, NTP or memcached. Firewalls track TCP state easily, while UDP state is inferred from timeouts. Security monitoring must cover both, since DNS tunnelling uses UDP 53.
02
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.
03
A US customer asks your Indian SaaS company for a SOC 2 report. What is it and which type should you aim for?
SOC 2 is an attestation report by an independent auditor on a service organisation's controls against the AICPA Trust Services Criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. A Type I report checks control design at a point in time; a Type II checks operating effectiveness over a period, typically 6 to 12 months. Indian SaaS companies selling to US customers commonly need SOC 2 Type II.
04
Describe a time you had to admit you did not know something in a technical discussion.
Situation: in a design review, an architect asked me whether our VPN supported post-quantum key exchange. Task: give an accurate answer. Action: I said I did not know rather than guessing, checked the vendor documentation and release notes that afternoon and shared a short summary with options. Result: the team trusted my answers more, and the finding was added to our cryptography roadmap.
05
What is the difference between a policy, a standard, a procedure and a guideline?
A policy is a high-level management statement of intent, such as all data must be classified. A standard sets mandatory specific requirements, like AES-256 for confidential data. A procedure gives step-by-step instructions to meet the standard. A guideline is recommended but optional advice. This hierarchy lets policies stay stable while standards and procedures change with technology.
06
A user on the office LAN reports repeated certificate warnings and you suspect ARP spoofing. What is happening and how do you stop it?
ARP has no authentication, so an attacker on the same LAN can send fake ARP replies linking their MAC address to the gateway's IP. Victims then send traffic through the attacker, enabling man-in-the-middle interception. Defences include Dynamic ARP Inspection with DHCP snooping on switches, port security, network access control, and encrypting traffic end to end with TLS so intercepted data is useless.
IaC scanning checks Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep or Kubernetes manifests for misconfigurations before deployment, such as public buckets or unencrypted databases. Tools include Checkov, tfsec in Trivy, and KICS. It shifts security left, so issues are fixed in a pull request rather than in production. Combine it with policy as code, like OPA, and drift detection to catch manual changes made in the console.
08
Tell me about a time you improved a process with automation.
Situation: our team checked cloud accounts manually every week for public buckets, which took hours. Task: make it faster and continuous. Action: I wrote a small script using the cloud CLI, scheduled it, and sent findings to a team channel with owner tags, then moved it into the CSPM tool. Result: checks ran hourly and average exposure time dropped from days to under an hour.
Chain of custody is the documented record of who collected evidence, when, how, where it was stored and every person who handled it. It proves evidence was not altered, which is essential if the case goes to court or regulators. Practices include hashing disk images at acquisition, using write blockers, storing evidence securely and logging every transfer with signatures and timestamps.
10
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.
Zero Trust removes implicit trust based on network location. Every request is verified using identity, device health and context, access is least privilege and granted per session, and the environment is assumed to be already breached. NIST SP 800-207 describes the model. In practice it means strong MFA, device posture checks, identity-aware proxies instead of flat VPN access, micro-segmentation and continuous monitoring. It is a journey, not a single product.
12
What is the difference between authentication, authorisation and accounting?
Authentication proves who you are, for example password plus an OTP or passkey. Authorisation decides what you are allowed to do after login, such as read-only access to a finance folder. Accounting, or auditing, records what you actually did, like logins, file access and admin changes. Together they are called AAA. Weak accounting is a common gap, because without logs an incident cannot be investigated.
13
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.
14
Management wants to replace the VPN with Zero Trust access. How would you plan it?
I would start by inventorying applications and who uses them, then pick a low-risk app group for a pilot with an identity-aware proxy or ZTNA service. Integrate it with the identity provider, enforce MFA and device posture checks, and monitor access logs. Expand app by app, keep the VPN for legacy needs during transition, and retire it once every app is covered and tested.
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.
16
You find a web shell on a public web server. What steps do you take?
Do not just delete it. Capture the file, web logs and a memory image if possible, then identify when it was created and which request uploaded it. Search logs for commands executed through it and lateral movement from the server. Contain by isolating the server or blocking the path at the WAF, then patch the vulnerable application, rebuild from a clean image and rotate any credentials stored on it.
Pick a realistic scenario, such as ransomware on a weekend, and invite IT, security, legal, communications and business leaders. A facilitator releases injects step by step, like a ransom note appearing or a journalist calling, and participants explain decisions using the real plan. Record gaps in contacts, authority, backups and reporting timelines. Share findings and track fixes, and repeat at least twice a year.
18
A key log source stopped sending data to the SIEM two days ago. Why does it matter and what do you do?
Silent log gaps create blind spots where attacks go undetected, and they can also break compliance. Raise it as a priority issue, check the forwarder or agent health, network path, licence limits and parsing errors, and restore ingestion. Check whether the gap overlapped any suspicious activity. Then add log source health monitoring that alerts when expected volume drops, so gaps are found in hours, not days.
19
Describe a time you handled a stressful outage or security issue.
Situation: during my internship the office internet went down during a client demo because of a broadcast storm. Task: restore service quickly. Action: I checked switch logs, found a looped cable creating a loop, removed it, and then enabled spanning tree and storm control with my senior. Result: service returned in 20 minutes, and I wrote a short runbook so the team could resolve similar issues faster.
20
How would you run a basic threat model for a new web application?
Draw a data flow diagram showing users, the web app, APIs, databases and third parties, and mark trust boundaries. Then apply STRIDE to each element: Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service and Elevation of privilege. For each threat, record the existing control, a risk rating and an owner. Repeat the model whenever the architecture changes, ideally during design reviews.
21
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.
22
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.
23
How do you write a Splunk search to find brute-force attempts on Windows?
Search failed logon events, count per account and source, and filter high counts.
index=wineventlog EventCode=4625
| stats count AS failures dc(TargetUserName) AS users BY IpAddress
| where failures > 50
| sort - failures
A high distinct user count from one IP points to password spraying rather than a single account brute force.
24
An auditor finds that access reviews were not done for two quarters. What do you do?
Acknowledge the finding and agree a remediation plan. Immediately run the overdue reviews for in-scope systems, prioritising privileged access, and revoke unneeded access. Find the cause, such as no owner or a manual process, and fix it by assigning owners, automating campaigns in the IGA tool and adding reminders and escalations. Provide evidence of completed reviews to close the finding.
User and Entity Behaviour Analytics builds baselines of normal behaviour for users, hosts and service accounts, then flags anomalies such as logging in from a new country, accessing far more files than usual or a service account doing interactive logins. It helps detect insider threats and stolen credentials that look like normal logins. It needs good identity data and careful tuning to avoid noisy alerts.
26
A user reports a pop-up saying their files are encrypted. What are your first steps?
First, isolate the device from the network, ideally through EDR network containment, without powering it off so memory evidence is kept. Inform the incident lead and start a timeline. Check for the same indicators on other hosts, disable the user's sessions and reset credentials if needed, and identify the ransomware family from the note. Then confirm backups are intact and offline before any recovery begins.
27
Tell me about a time you followed process even though a shortcut was tempting.
Situation: during a suspected malware case, a senior engineer wanted to wipe the laptop immediately to save time. Task: contain the threat while preserving evidence. Action: I explained that we needed a memory capture and EDR timeline first, which would take 20 minutes, and isolated the laptop meanwhile. Result: the capture revealed stolen browser credentials, so we reset them before they were misused.
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.
29
A developer wants to write their own encryption algorithm for customer data. How do you respond?
I would advise against it. Custom cryptography almost always has flaws that experts would find, and it fails audits. Instead, use well-reviewed libraries such as libsodium, platform crypto APIs, or the cloud KMS with AES-GCM and envelope encryption. I would offer to help choose the right library and key management design, and include a security review in the feature's pull request.
30
How do you enable organisation-wide audit logging in AWS?
Create a multi-region organisation trail that sends logs to a bucket in a dedicated log archive account.
aws cloudtrail create-trail --name org-trail \
--s3-bucket-name central-ct-logs --is-multi-region-trail \
--is-organization-trail --enable-log-file-validation
aws cloudtrail start-logging --name org-trail
Protect the bucket with Object Lock and an SCP that denies stopping CloudTrail.
Tips to crack the PwC Cyber Security interview
Learn about the PwC Professional framework, which covers whole leadership, business acumen, technical capabilities and relationships.
Practise case questions and guesstimates with a clear structure, especially for consulting and advisory roles.
Revise Excel, SQL and a BI tool, and be ready to describe how analysis helped a decision.
Keep a one-minute story ready for every project on your CV: problem, your part, tools, result.
Practise the hard questions on this page aloud; PwC interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the PwC Cyber Security interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Online assessment (aptitude + technical); Group discussion or case round; Technical interview; Partner or HR round. The exact rounds change with the role, team, location and your experience, so confirm the process with the recruiter.
Which topics should I prepare for the PwC Cyber Security interview?
This practice set leans on Network Security (6), Incident Response and Forensics (5), GRC and Compliance (5), Security Fundamentals (4). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most PwC interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at PwC?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in consulting interviews like PwC's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does PwC hire Cyber Security professionals in India?
PwC has large teams in Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurugram. Openings and locations change often, so check the PwC careers page and filter by city and experience.