Tech Assessment

Cybersecurity is among the most critical aspects of building an online business and it goes without saying it needs to have an expert to make sure everything is in place. Without good cybersecurity experts, it becomes an extremely difficult task to protect your company’s data, servers, software, and other electronic systems from hackers and other cyber attacks. As per Accenture data security breaches have surged by 11% since 2018.

As of today, we are in a world where almost everything is online and electronic devices are important as food, we can’t live without them. This goes without saying that our information is online too but the threat of cyber-attacks or stolen data still looms over us.

This is why cybersecurity interviews should be as thorough as any other interview for a tech role. When hiring a cybersecurity expert, you should know what the role requires, what to ask, and what you should look out for in a candidate.

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, and data from digital attacks. These attacks aim to access, change, or destroy sensitive information, extort money from users, or disrupt normal business processes.

In essence, cybersecurity is about safeguarding the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of information. It involves a combination of technologies, processes, and people working together to create a secure environment.

Key areas of cybersecurity include:

Network security: Protecting computer networks from intruders.

Application security: Ensuring software and applications are free from vulnerabilities.

Data security: Protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction.

Endpoint security: Protecting individual devices like computers, laptops, and smartphones.

Cloud security: Safeguarding data and applications stored in the cloud.

Importance of a thorough tech interview for cybersecurity candidates

As mentioned above, almost everything is online. To keep up with the ever-growing online population and to make the best out of this opportunity, businesses need individuals who are well versed in coding and other related aspects.

Moreover, it’s not just about coding and tech, you also need someone who can think on their feet and come up with abstract solutions for abstract problems. As a recruiter, you will find a ton of applicants with outstanding resumes, but a lot of them may not translate to practical application.

This is why you need to be thorough with your cybersecurity interview questions to hire the best candidates only. You can also make use of HR tech software and tools to smoothen the process of tech interviews. For instance, you could use FaceCode, a useful tool by HackerEarth that lets you take online interviews with an in-built code editor that can be used in real-time and comes with a lot of other features as well.

Apart from that, asking the right questions and looking out for optimal answers will get you the best candidates possible. Asking the right questions also opens up the avenue for good dialogue and helps the candidates understand the role and brand better. The answers provided will help the interviewer understand candidates better.

It also helps recruiters understand the extent of the candidate’s abilities and their interest in/towards the brand.

Also Read: Hiring DEV Talent: SQL Interview Questions

Interview questions to ask cybersecurity candidates

Here’s a list of 20 cybersecurity interview questions that you should ask if you want to hire the best candidate:

#1 – State your personal achievements and certifications in cybersecurity.

This is an important question, it will help you understand the candidates’ qualifications and experience. It will give you a brief look into their academic journey in cybersecurity as well from which you can ascertain if they’re a good fit for the role or not.

Any candidates who have put in the work will clearly stand out from the rest.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an eye out for applicants who have certifications that could close the gap in your cybersecurity system.

Don’t just look at their qualifications, look for candidates who are willing to learn on the job as well, why?

Because you need someone who can constantly grow with the organization.

#2 – Tell us, If you were a hacker, how would you steal our information?

This is a unique question and in simple words, you should look out for unique answers.

Cyber-criminals, typically are able to get into several well-protected systems because they’re either one step ahead or are extremely abstract in their thinking and if you want to keep your systems/data safe, you need someone who can match their abstract thinking.

You need someone who can understand the way they think and should be able to come up with solutions for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for practical yet hypothetical problems with solutions. Also, someone who can read patterns and predict future trends in the digital world will be of great help, undoubtedly.

#3 – What is effective cybersecurity? How would you quantify it?

One of the cybersecurity interview questions that need not have a correct answer, you should ask this question to understand your candidates’ definition of effective cybersecurity and the parameters he/she would follow to quantify the same.

Of course, every answer will not be the same, but this will also help you differentiate between people who’ve had practical experience and those who haven’t. Although answers may vary, a good candidate will use practical examples and offer practical parameters for measuring different aspects of effective cybersecurity.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for the methods they use to define effective cybersecurity and more importantly, you need to know how the candidates rate and understand the different parameters involved.

#4 – When building firewalls, do you choose closed ports or filtered ports? Explain why

Talking tech terminologies and understanding them are two different things, this question helps you understand if the candidates have sound knowledge of the basics. Anyone who has been in this field will answer this question with relative ease.

#5 – Tell us about a time when you had to resolve an issue after finding a vulnerability issue in your company’s server.

The answer to this question will tell you how good the candidate is at figuring out problems and weak spots in the server. You will also be able to assess them on their problem-solving skills.

What Should You Look Out For?

The ability to take initiative, and always trying to be one step ahead are two things you should look out for here.

#6 – If there was a massive security breach? How would you inform your superiors of the situation?

One thing has always been clear in business, communication is everything, it does not matter how skilled you are, if you cannot communicate with other people within the organization, then you are not helping the organization grow.

It also helps you see how well the candidates can communicate the problem to people who aren’t well versed in tech.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for the ability to explain tech terms in a non-technical way. Someone who can explain the gravity of the situation without disrupting any peace.

#7 – Tell us about how well you work with a team. Give an example as well.

Working together with other employees and teams when necessary is an important part of the job description, you need individuals who can build rapport and work with other team members as well. A lone wolf is of no use to a company.

What Should You Look Out For?

It goes without saying that you need to keep an eye on someone who can be a great team player.

Again, look for moments of hesitation when you ask this question, it could indicate they may not play well with a team.

#8 – Did you ever identify an incoming cyber-attack? If so, how did you handle the same?

This can give you an insight into how good the candidate is at identifying incoming attacks, be it internal or external threats. Also, it gives you a picture of how they are handled from which you can ascertain their effectiveness and the candidates’ ability to think/act quickly.

What Should You Look Out For?

Intricate information about the cyberattacks and the candidate’s responses to the same.

#9 – What do you use in your home network?

A simple yet effective cybersecurity interview question, it will help you understand the candidates’ personal preferences in tech and how they make use of it. It is also an indication of how well the candidate’ knows the tools he’s using.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an eye out for how the candidate uses his/her setup, even if they don’t have the latest setup, what matters is how effectively they use their current ones.

#10 – What do you think is this organization’s cybersecurity risk?

Of course, he may not be able to give the most accurate answer given the fact that he doesn’t know all the details involved. But if the candidates recommend a one-for-all solution, that is not what you’re looking for.

You need someone who can do a risk assessment with the relevant information and accordingly comes up with an effective solution.

What Should You Lookout For?

Look out for candidates who ask for certain specific information when they’re faced with this question, you want people who will understand your system and its intricacies.

#11 – If you were our cybersecurity expert, what would you want from our company to get the job done?

In this question, it’s not just about obtaining software and quoting prices. You should look for the candidates’ interest to work with other teams for better outcomes.

You should understand if the candidates’ request is feasible or not and if it is, is it worth spending that money?

What Should You Look Out For?

Candidates who don’t just name tools and software but know how to make effective use of them and are able to come up with viable solutions.

#12 – How will you prevent a brute-force attack?

one of the cybersecurity interview questions that will help you understand how good the candidate is when it comes to preventing an attack. It will tell about the preventive measures that the candidate is familiar with.

#13 – Has there been an instance where you’ve taken down your company’s network while testing?

Although that shouldn’t happen, it is quite unavoidable. For candidates to admit the same and their experience may not be the best thing to do, but the truth is quite the opposite.

If a candidate opens up about an incident where he took down the company server, it reflects honesty and you need honest people on the team. Everyone makes mistakes, but they should be accepting of it as well.

What Should You Look Out For?

It’s simple, look out for genuine answers that reflect their honesty.

#14 – Are cybersecurity certifications the most important?

A ton of candidates nowadays come with multiple certifications, but do they think it’s the most important?

Their answer will tell you a lot about them. Of course, certifications are important but the experience will always matter slightly more. The reason for asking this is, that you need someone who understands that practical cybersecurity problems aren’t like certification courses.

What Should You Look Out For?

For candidates with relevant certifications and experience to back it up as well.

#15 – Do you have an emergency procedure in place?

Cybersecurity professionals must concentrate on both regular surveillance and application as well as long-term planning and development. This is done to prevent cyberattacks and if a cyberattack happens, they should have a contingency plan in place.

These cybersecurity interview questions will help you understand if the candidate can think one step ahead at all times.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an ear out for practical contingency strategies and also for prior experiences that state the same.

#16 – What is the difference between IDS and IPS?

This will help you understand how well the candidate knows his basics. IPS is basically to scan and identify incoming cyberattacks. IDS is a monitoring system.

What Should You Look Out For?

For a detailed difference between the two as they are different and yet they work together. Someone who knows will be pretty experienced.

#17 – Explain system hardening.

This refers to software and methods used to protect vulnerable systems in the organization. You need someone who can compress the attack surface effectively.

What Should You Look Out For?

A practical example of them hardening any system and how it helped.

#18 – Polymorphic viruses: What are they?

You need someone who can not only identify attacks but identify viruses as well, especially the ones that can change after it infects a file.

As an organization prone to this risk, you need someone who can identify this and provide a solution for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

Practical ways of identifying polymorphic viruses and effective solutions. Also, look for any experience related to the same.

#19 – Explain active reconnaissance.

This refers to reconnaissance by the attackers. But this isn’t a direct attack, it’s a recon mission of sorts, mainly to steal data.

You need someone who can differentiate between different types of attacks and provide positive outcomes for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

For any experience of the same and how they handled it.

#20 – How would you strengthen our company’s cyber defense?

You need someone who will proactively suggest effective solutions to safeguard to company’s systems and servers.

What Should You Look Out For?

Questions about the current system to make said suggestions, will help you understand how well the candidates can understand your system and provide defensive solutions for the same.

The pandemic has reshaped the global workforce area dramatically, causing tech companies to hire more remote developers. According to a recent Eurofound report, 34% of employees residing in the EU worked exclusively from home as of July 2021. Compared to pre-COVID statistics from 2018, that’s a whopping six-fold increase.

The numbers are similar in other regions around the world. In the IT sector, telework had been the norm before the coronavirus crisis broke out, let alone the current circumstances. At some point, many software engineering companies run into difficulties filling job positions in their area and turn to the workforce overseas. In August 2021, 77% of job offers posted on a popular social news website for computer science professionals mentioned remote work.

That being said, HR departments often face a nontrivial dilemma when trying to bridge the talent gap with local coders: to hire remote developers from offshore locations or relocate employees so that they work in your office. For a start, let’s dwell on the differences between these two options.

In the relocation scenario, a programmer moves to another place (city or country) to work onsite. The employer typically assists with work permits, visas, transportation, and accommodations. The whole process extends over several months.

Contrary to this approach, remote developers enhance your office team from another location. This tactic is much more cost-efficient than relocation as long as the software engineering or web design workflow is backed by proper administrative support, digital infrastructure, and the security of collaboration at a distance.

India is one of the world’s fastest-growing remote developer hubs

Companies based in Europe and North America are increasingly hiring remote developers from South Asia. India is dominating this ecosystem due to the high level of education and long-running track record of its IT professionals. Furthermore, the country is exhibiting a booming growth of developer population.

Some may argue that being in different time zones will put a spanner in the works, but well-thought-out management and coordination of efforts between onsite and remote teams can smooth the edges in this context. Another important thing to consider is that most Indian developers speak fluent English, which facilitates the interaction considerably.

Things on the plus side of programmer relocation

The ability to communicate in person and collaborate side-by-side is the fundamental advantage of relocating personnel to your locale. It underlies effective teamwork, quick decision-making, and instant feedback. The following aspects make a difference in this case:

• Keeping corporate culture high. Having all employees under the same umbrella is the pillar of some companies’ culture. These enterprises spare no expense to turn their offices into oases for synergy between team members.
• Face-to-face communication. Beyond all doubt, being able to discuss work issues in the same office is important. It is a prerequisite for problem-solving in real time without the need to give someone a phone call or type a message and wait for a reply.

81% of professional developers are employed full-time, a decrease from 83% in 2020. The percentage of professional developers saying they were independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed increased from 9.5% in 2020 to 11.2% in 2021 – indicating potential job insecurity or a shift to more flexible work arrangements.

– StackOverflow

Challenges of relocation

The bitter truth is that developer relocation is a bumpy road. You will have to tackle a handful of bureaucratic obstacles, incur significant costs, and spend a lot of time addressing all the accommodation nuances. Ultimately, these hurdles may eclipse the advantages and discourage company executives from carrying through with their original intentions.

Let’s get the lowdown on these gotchas:

• A cumbersome hiring process. It’s hard to find a competent developer and get them on board these days, and even more so if the candidate resides in another country. This is doable, though. If you are successful in your scouting endeavors and recruit the right professional, that’s half the battle. Keep in mind that you will additionally need to prep and file paperwork for visas and work permits. Sorting out all these technicalities gobbles up your time, which means you may have to postpone your next major project.
• Costs. Moving has never been cheap. If you are planning to cover your new employee’s relocation expenses, be ready to pay a few eyebrow-raising bills for the travel, temporary or corporate housing, and other services. You may additionally need to pay for language lessons. If the employee is moving with their family, assistance with schooling and childcare may be necessary, too. All this expenditure is particularly frustrating if it eventually turns out that the person is not the right fit.
• Low flexibility. With relocation, it is problematic to align the size of your dev team with your current programming needs down the line. After investing funds and a ton of effort, such a decision can be tough.
  Also, there are several caveats on the employee’s end. Culture shock, social integration difficulties, and a strain on family relationships due to the dramatic change are common problems encountered in light of relocation.

The benefits of recruiting remote developers

IT firms can get a lot of mileage out of working with remote coders. This method of cooperation is more cost-efficient and more flexible than the relocation approach, with today’s top-notch technologies helping you ruin communication barriers that used to be a serious concern. Here is a summary of arguments in favor of this move:

• Less time, less spending. If you choose to cooperate with a remote development team, relocation costs won’t be draining your budget. Also, neither your company nor the employee has to go through the fuss of moving and finding an apartment near your office. At the end of the day, you save a great deal of time by extracting this tedious part out of the equation.
• A competent crew. According to a SkillValue report, developers from India have a decent score index (78.13 out of 100), which means they are competent enough to meet your company’s programming needs. Their qualification stems, in part, from an increasing level of education in the country. Many of these coders have a wide spectrum of skills in both mainstream and rare programming languages. Most of them can easily communicate with foreigners owing to their excellent English, both written and spoken. Plus, diligence is part of their mentality.
• Flexibility. Sometimes, software engineering businesses need to upsize or downsize their teams based on current projects and the state of the market niche they are in. A recruitment model involving remote devs allows you to adjust the size of your team to different circumstances quickly. As a rule, this can be done with a month’s notice.
• Corporate culture. There is no denying that an in-house team is the best environment for nurturing your company’s values. With remote workers, you can fill the void by having a dedicated HR manager who is responsible for continuous communication with an overseas team. This is also a great way to gather feedback from remote colleagues and address their concerns in real time.
• Plenty of secure communication channels. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Specialized platforms such as Slack and Zoom will help you maintain permanent communication with your staff working from another place. These services provide end-to-end encryption of your video conferences and chats to keep sensitive information intact. Although Zoom dealt with a series of security and privacy scandals last year, it has since addressed those vulnerabilities and is now a reliable tool to stay in touch with your teleworkers.

Are you up to hiring remote developers? HackerEarth is here to help

HackerEarth is a company headquartered in San Francisco, US, that specializes in assessing and screening software developers to help organizations make informed, data-driven hiring decisions. Boasting a decade of experience in this area, it provides enterprise software that accurately evaluates candidates for more than 12 roles and 80 skills across all levels. The company has conducted over 1,000 virtual hackathons over the years.

With HackerEarth’s automated tools, you can easily set up a real-time remote programming or video interviewing session with your candidates. Frictionless integration with the world’s top applicant tracking systems (ATS), such as Zoho, Workable, and Greenhouse, further facilitates the hiring workflow. This platform is used by hundreds of high-profile customers around the world, including Amazon, Barclays, Intel, VMWare, and Zalora.

You can hire remote developers, grow, and build strong teams with the company’s flexible assessment as well as learning and development plans. If you want to enhance your business with remote development talent, outsourcing the hardest part to HackerEarth is a sure-shot way to give your recruitment effort a boost.

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This article is contributed by David Balaban. David is a computer security researcher with over 17 years of experience in malware analysis. He is also a regular contributor to 500+ high-profile tech and security websites. David regularly covers topics related to the cyber threat landscape and has a strong track record as an investigative journalist.

You can find some of his guest articles here OR connect with him at David Balaban Security.

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Developers today require a lot more from their jobs than just decent compensation and bonuses. In 2025, flexibility and work-from-home options take on a lot more priority than ever. In times of The Great Resignation, companies need to rework their tech recruiting policies and practices to attract top talent.

Conventional recruitment strategies don’t hold much water in the current tech hiring landscape. Recruiters and hiring managers who recognize this and start looking at newer recruiting methods will come out on top this year — create a workforce that is engaged, loyal, and future-ready.

With our collection of tech recruiting resources, change the way you build your tech teams for the better.

The smart recruiter does not wait for a talented employee to resign to jump into action. They would have engaged and started a dialogue with the developer community long before any job role opens up.

If developers recognize your brand they are quick to respond to you and your company’s updates. This way you have a warmed-up, talented developer pool at your fingertips.

What are the best ways for engaging and hiring tech talent?

In our recent survey of recruiters, we asked them to tell us their top methods of pre-hiring engagement. Here’s what they said:

• Hackathons (32.1%)
• Coding contests (27.4%)
• Workshops (22.3%)
• Webinars (16.2%)

The power of hackathons for tapping into the power of the developer community is something HackerEarth has been harnessing for eight years now.

• What are the things you need to know going into a hackathon?

Read our Hackathon Survival Guide

• What were the lessons we learned from running over 200 hackathons?

5 lessons we want to share with you

Sourcing for a freshly opened job role is a tough ask. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find great candidates, the deadlines to close a job role are unrealistic, and your talent pool is saturated. And this is where we got you covered!

• How to write job postings that actually work where applications pour in by the thousands?

Download your copy today!

• To write even better job postings and understand what you are looking for, design candidate personas. There is also a free template attached.

Guide to creating candidate personas

• How do you make sure that your job postings are not gender-biased?

Write gender-fluid job descriptions

• Hiring tech talent from social media is a skill in itself. Tailor your recruitment strategies to each platform with this cheat sheet.

Get the social recruiting cheat sheet

Why do traditional recruitment strategies fail, especially when assessing candidates?

• In most campus hiring scenarios, developers are expected to solve coding problems with pen and paper. This is not how the real world works, and is akin to asking somebody to bake a cake without an oven — only leads to subpar performance. Showcasing their coding skills is the one thing developers need to be able to do and that can’t happen on a word processor tool.
• If we put aside issues with manual testing methods, there’s the bigger problem of proctoring. With recruiters being worked to the bone during hiring season, human error is inevitable. Robust proctoring measures are the only way to ensure your candidates are not using unfair means to ace the test.

Given that coding assessments play a huge role in screening potential candidates, you ought to employ recruitment strategies that are the most intelligent, objective, and skill-based.

How can you take your recruitment strategies to the next level?

At HackerEarth, our motto has always been to match developers with the right opportunities. We designed our Assessment platform to make it easier for recruiters to create role-based tests.

Let me show you 4 simple ways to create tests on our platform.

Create coding assessments on HackerEarth

It also comes with a built-in proctoring feature, making it easy for both developers and interviewers.

Explore our built-in proctoring features

The last step in any tech recruiting process is the ‘Interview’. It is probably the most hated step, with developers over the years complaining about clunky and long-drawn-out interviews.

Why are coding interviews broken?

While this is not an exhaustive list, here are the most common reasons:

• The interview looks nothing like the job. Developers are asked questions that do not showcase the technical skills required for the job. Solving questions using binary trees cannot be the most efficient way to test a developer’s coding knowledge.
• Coding interviews are extremely hard, which has made developers wonder who they are designed for. Also, they happen to be conducted in unrealistic environments where developers have no access to code editors or IDEs.
• Recruiters ghost candidates during the long interview process. They are left in the dark with no feedback, no idea what comes next, and no inkling of how they performed.

Can we fix them? Yes, it’s not too late!

First things first. What to look for when hiring a software developer? Will simply evaluating technical skills suffice? The answer is no.

If you want to hire the crème de la crème of the developer talent out there, you have to look for a well-rounded candidate.

#1 After speaking with several hiring managers, we’ve come up with a list of questions that showcase a developer’s technical skills.

Technical interview questions list

#2 Soft skills are like the cherry on top. They set the best of the candidates apart from the rest.

Behavioral interview questions list

#3 Our product whizkids have added new features to our intelligent remote interviewing tool, FaceCode to make the remote interview experience even better.

New updates for FaceCode

#4 Candidate experience in a tech interview is underrated. It is not given the attention it deserves, which leads to driving away talented candidates. Design a delightful candidate experience with FaceCode.

Get your copy of the ebook today!

What do the developer hiring trends look like in 2025?

It is always a good idea to stay abreast with the latest developer hiring trends that will inform the upcoming year.

• Our 2021 Developer Survey report is packed with responses from 25,431 developers across 171 countries. Let’s find out what makes a developer tick, shall we?

Get your copy of the report now!

• The brand new edition of our Developer Recruitment survey captured responses from 2500 HR and Engineering personnel. Let’s see how we can build great tech teams, going forward.

Download your copy of the report

Recruiting top tech talent the right way with our bonus recruiting resources

“How to recruit top tech talent in 2025?” is the main priority of recruiters across the globe. Coupled with everything we spoke about till now, here are some additional resources from HackerEarth’s archives that will set you up for success!

• What does the developer hiring process include? Read more in this playbook on Better Tech Hiring.
• Recruitment strategies in 2025 need to be highly data-driven. This is where a recruitment dashboard comes in handy. There’s a free template attached too.
• Here is a 6-step guide to creating the most detailed and optimized recruiting budget sheet in 2025. Also, attached is a sample sheet for your reference.
• Diversity and inclusion matter in 2025. With this handbook, ensure you stay on top of your D&I strategies.
• What would be the best platform for hiring developers? What tools would you require for each stage of the tech recruiting process? Here is a comprehensive list of everything you’ll need.