Cyber Security - SOC Analyst Interview Question and Answers

Due to the rapid increase in data breach incidents and sophisticated attacks, organizations are investing heavily in technologies and security solutions. The deployment of a security operation center (SOC) is a cost-effective strategy against these cyber threats. The SOC team deals with security incidents within the organization. The SOC analyst plays a vital role in the SOC team by monitoring the log data, identifying suspicious activities, and reporting to the higher authorities. It could be an excellent platform to start your career in cybersecurity. A candidate must have a basic knowledge of networking, malware analysis, and incidence response.

The cyber security field is one of the most booming fields in this decade. To get a job in this field, it depends on the kind of profile you are looking in the cyber security domain as this field has many different kinds of job roles.

SOC Analyst

SOC analysts are the first to respond to cyber security incidents. They report on cyberthreats and implement any changes needed to protect the organization. Job duties of SOC analysts include: Threat and vulnerability analysis. ... Analysis and response to previously unknown hardware and software vulnerabilities.

That said, it's not unusual for a Tier 1 SOC Analyst gig to be your first stop in the journey of your cybersecurity career. While every employer will attach a slightly different set of duties to any given job title, in general there are three tiers of SOC analyst jobs. The EC-Council's blog has a detailed breakdown of the differences among those tiers, but to sum up:

L1 SOC analysts are triage specialists who monitor, manage, and configure security tools, review incidents to assess their urgency, and escalate incidents if necessary.

L2 SOC analysts are incident responders, remediating serious attacks escalated from Tier 1, assessing the scope of the attack and affected systems, and collecting data for further analysis.

L3 SOC analysts are threat hunters, working proactively to seek out weaknesses and stealthy attackers, conducting penetration tests, and reviewing vulnerability assessments. Some Tier 3 analysts focus more on doing deep dives into datasets to understand what's happening during and after attacks.