Security Architecture Patterns and Tradeoffs Questions

Reusable security patterns and the decision making required to select and apply them. Candidates should be able to propose authentication and authorization models, role design and least privilege patterns, secure inter service and application programming interface communication patterns, encryption and key management approaches, secrets management and rotation practices, secure configuration baselines and hardening patterns, and assume compromise design approaches. Coverage includes selection criteria for patterns, control placement, and the trade offs between security, performance, cost, complexity, and operational burden. Candidates should also be able to communicate risk and security benefits to non technical stakeholders and know when to escalate to specialist security or cryptography experts.

HardSystem Design

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Design a secure API gateway that enforces authentication, fine-grained authorization, rate limiting, input validation, request/response logging with PII redaction, and small pre-filtering for DDoS protection. Explain where to place caching and how to avoid adding high latency for legitimate traffic.

EasyTechnical

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Define what a secure configuration baseline is for Linux servers and cloud resources. Provide examples of typical baseline items (e.g., SSH settings, unused service removal, kernel params, cloud resource permissions) and describe how you would enforce and audit these baselines at scale across multiple accounts and regions.

EasyTechnical

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Explain the 'assume compromise' or 'assume breach' design mindset. If you assume some components will be compromised, what architectural controls, monitoring, and containment patterns would you build into a typical SaaS platform?

MediumSystem Design

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For a SaaS that stores PII, propose an encryption strategy that covers encryption in transit, encryption at rest, field-level encryption where needed, and key separation between application and platform teams. Explain the operational and performance trade-offs.

EasyTechnical

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Given a microservice architecture with hundreds of services, propose a practical pattern to implement least-privilege for service accounts used for database access, background jobs, and internal API calls. Describe enforcement, discovery, and audit mechanisms you would use.

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