Basic interview questions related to CyberArk operations tasks that you might encounter:

1. General CyberArk Operations

• Q1: What is CyberArk, and why is it important for organizations?

• A: CyberArk is a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution that helps organizations secure, manage, and monitor privileged accounts to prevent security breaches, particularly those caused by insider threats and cyber-attacks targeting privileged access.

• Q2: What are the key components of CyberArk’s PAM solution?

• A: The key components are the Digital Vault, PVWA (Password Vault Web Access), CPM (Central Policy Manager), PSM (Privileged Session Manager), and Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA).

2. CyberArk Vault Operations

• Q3: What is the purpose of the CyberArk Vault?

• A: The Vault stores and protects privileged account passwords, credentials, and other sensitive data. It uses encryption and access control to ensure data security.

• Q4: How would you onboard a new privileged account into the CyberArk Vault?

• A: Onboarding involves creating a safe, defining platform-specific rules, adding the account details (username, password), setting access policies, and configuring automatic password management using CPM.

3. Password Management Operations

• Q5: How does CPM manage passwords in CyberArk?

• A: CPM (Central Policy Manager) automatically rotates, manages, and validates passwords according to pre-configured policies, ensuring that passwords meet security requirements and are frequently changed.

• Q6: What steps would you take if a password rotation fails?

• A: Troubleshooting would include checking network connectivity to the target system, verifying the account has the correct privileges, reviewing the platform configuration, and examining the CPM logs for errors.

4. Session Management Operations

• Q7: What is Privileged Session Manager (PSM), and why is it used?

• A: PSM provides secure session monitoring and recording for privileged access to systems, ensuring that all actions taken during a session are logged and auditable to detect any suspicious activity.

• Q8: How do you troubleshoot issues with PSM session recordings not being captured?

• A: Troubleshooting steps include checking the session recording path for disk space, ensuring the PSM connector configuration is correct, and reviewing PSM logs for specific errors.

5. Monitoring and Auditing Operations

• Q9: How would you monitor privileged access activities in CyberArk?

• A: Monitoring involves using Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) to detect suspicious activities like unauthorized access attempts, abnormal session behavior, and non-compliant activities. Regular reviews of session logs and audit trails in PVWA are also part of monitoring.

• Q10: How does Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) enhance security?

• A: PTA continuously analyzes privileged account activities, detects potential insider threats and anomalies, and provides real-time alerts to prevent or mitigate security breaches.

6. Backup and Restore Operations

• Q11: How would you back up the CyberArk Vault?

• A: Use CyberArk’s built-in backup utility to perform regular backups of the Vault data and configuration files. Ensure that backups are stored securely and can be restored in case of an emergency.

• Q12: What steps would you take to restore the CyberArk Vault from a backup?

• A: The steps include stopping all services that interact with the Vault, restoring the vault data from the latest backup, ensuring database consistency, and restarting services in a specific order.

7. Integration Operations

• Q13: How do you integrate CyberArk with LDAP or Active Directory?

• A: Integration involves configuring the LDAP directory in CyberArk PVWA settings, setting up LDAP authentication rules, synchronizing user groups, and ensuring that LDAP users can authenticate and access the appropriate safes.

• Q14: How do you configure CyberArk to work with SIEM for security monitoring?

• A: Configure CyberArk to forward audit logs and privileged session activities to a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system, ensuring that SIEM can correlate and alert on critical security events related to privileged access.

8. Troubleshooting and Maintenance

• Q15: What are some common issues in CyberArk, and how do you troubleshoot them?

• A: Common issues include password rotation failures, login issues, and session recording problems. Troubleshooting involves reviewing logs, checking permissions, ensuring network connectivity, and verifying configuration settings.

• Q16: How do you ensure CyberArk is always updated with the latest security patches?

• A: Regularly check for updates from CyberArk, plan maintenance windows, and follow the documented procedures to apply patches and updates to CyberArk components in a controlled manner.

9. Account Discovery Operations

• Q17: How does CyberArk Account Discovery work?

• A: Account Discovery scans the network for unmanaged privileged accounts and automatically onboards them into the vault for password management and monitoring.

• Q18: What should you do if the Account Discovery tool fails to find all privileged accounts?

• A: Check the discovery rule configuration, ensure proper network access, verify credentials used for scanning, and examine the logs for specific discovery errors.

These questions are designed to cover basic operational tasks within a CyberArk environment, helping interviewers assess a candidate’s familiarity with key functionalities, troubleshooting, and management processes.