The Essential Japan Cyber Security Interview Guide

I’ve written this Essential Japan Cyber Security Interview Guide to help you navigate the complex interview process in Japan. The advice is based on my personal experience helping over 105 Cyber Security Professionals secure a new role in Japan and more than 1,000 hours of conversations with Hiring Managers.

We spend an average of 80,000 hours working in our lifetime. Investing a few hours to understand the game of interviewing and acing your next interview could help give you:

• More options to decide which company gives you the platform to accelerate your career goals
• Stronger salary negotiation power
• An elevated career title

OVERVIEW

1. BEFORE THE INTERVIEW

• Investor Presentations: Research the company to understand what you need to protect (how they generate revenue)
• Limitations of News articles for preparation
• Research the interviewers LinkedIn profiles and online presence
• Understand the Role

2. THE INTERVIEW

• Common Interview Questions
• General Security Questions
• Technical Security Questions
• Great Questions you can ask
• Common Mistakes to avoid
• Common Interview Questions for foreigners or overseas candidates

BEFORE THE INTERVIEW

Investor Presentations: Research the company to understand what you need to protect (how they generate revenue)

• The number one missed opportunity to prepare for an interview is failing to read the Investor Relations Presentation before an interview. The investor presentation is the ultimate source of information for you to ace your next interview. Note: the investor presentation is different from the consolidated financial report.
• While working in Financial Markets I read investor presentations to get a quick overview of the company’s financial health and their future strategy.
• I recommend reviewing the companies fourth quarterly (Q4) Investor presentation, it's often more in-depth covering areas such as: Financial Performance (Revenue, Cost, Net Profit) Overview of business segments (breakdown of revenue) Strategic goals and new technology investment. Growth and Consolidation strategies Digital Transformation Risk (Cyber and Operational) Economic Outlook

Limitations of News articles for preparations

Candidates often spend too much time researching a company via news articles only.

Pro's: covers quick news that occurred after the investor presentations. Key executive changes, New cyber security incidents, market expansion / consolidation, Mergers and Acquisitions or any large regulatory fines.

Con's: Information can be short term focused and reactionary. Eg. These news events may have already happened. Tends to not highlight longer term business trends, strategic technology investment and goals of the company.

INTERVIEWERS

Research the interviewers LinkedIn profiles and online presence

• Interviewers are likely to ask questions based on their experience and strengths. eg. a Department Manager is less likely to ask you technical questions. Whereas a Security Engineer with no management responsibilities is likely to ask you technical questions based on the technical stack they are strong in.
• C-Level executives are more likely to have video content online speaking to the media or conducting a presentation. This will give you insight to their communication style. Matching their tone and pace is a proven way to build rapport with your interviewer.
• Can you reach out to a connection or friend at the company to understand the stakeholders and company better?

Understand the Role

Prior to the interview your goal is to understand the key challenge of the team and how you can position yourself as the solution to help the team achieve those goals.

If you are being hired as a CISO or Head of Security Department. Understand if you are being brought in for:

• Start-Up: Building a team, department, or organization from scratch, which requires defining vision, missions, and processes, and recruiting a team aligned with these goals.
• Turnaround: Taking charge of a unit or organization in crisis. This situation demands quick assessment and rapid action to stabilize and turn around the organization’s fortunes.
• Business As Usual (BAU): Manages ongoing operations, ensuring that the day-to-day activities of an organization run smoothly and efficiently. They focus on maintaining stability, optimizing processes, and leading their team to meet established performance standards and operational goals.

Reference: The First 90 Days" by Michael D. Watkins

THE INTERVIEW

Common Interview Questions

Tell me about yourself?

• Keep it brief, less than five minutes overview of your career highlights!

Why this company?

• Testing if you have done research about the company.

Why this role?

• Testing if you understand the challenges of the role

Why you?

• Opportunity to share how do you connect your strengths and motivations to help the company solve the teams challenges!

Tell me about your mid to long term career goals?

• Opportunity to connect your strengths to your goals. Can you proactively identify areas you need support to drive your career to the next stage?

General Security Questions

Explain a Security concept to an Executive, Non-Executive an engineer and fellow security engineer?

• Can you communicate to a non-technical audience in way they can understand

Who do you admire in the Security field?

• The answer you give for why is most important, for example did you choose a technical SME or a charismatic leader. We tend to select people we aspire to become like.

If you started at this company how would you determine the security baseline?

• Metrics you could look at: benchmark against standards like ISO27001, NIST Frameworks. Review existing policies and standards. Review Training and awareness data such as phishing email success rates and training completion.

How do you get the business bought into driving the security agenda?

• Are you building relationships with key stakeholders to embed Security Operational Key Results (OKRs) in their annual scorecards (impacts bonus). Is it easy for them to understand and achieve?

If Global wants to implement common security standards in Japan that don’t make logical sense and are opposed by the Japan team. What would you do? How would you push back?

• They are checking are you simply enforcing global policies or can you evaluate if the decisions are appropriate for the Japan market and push back with logic, data and evidence.

How do you present the state of security to the CEO?

• How good are you at storytelling to convey a compelling narrative quantifying cyber risk, business risk and consequences for not taking action.

Do you have experience setting and driving Security strategy and policy? or just implementing what global requires? (If you are interviewing for a Japanese HQ company.)

• Traditionally bilingual security professionals work in International companies with limited exposure to driving and developing Security strategy or leading large Security teams. You need to be able to demonstrate potential by referencing stories that are relevant.

Tell me about a complex project you worked on in the past that you are most proud of, what was your role in the project, how did you achieve the project goals?

• eg, I lead the project to share the lessons from our predicative analysis in threat detections to our fraud team to proactively identify and save ￥500m JPY in annual fraud. The challenge was standardizing data sources to improve fraud correlation rates. I decided to collaborate with the IT team to clean the data and submit new requirements to standardize data output. etc

How do you drive Security Awareness in the organization?

• eg. Security training Awareness completion was low at only 25% due to the material only being available in English and not relevant to our industry. I took the lead to create short Japanese Manga style shorts that could be read in 3 minute blocks. As a result completion rates are now 97% after 6 months.

What does your home lab set up look like?

• Hardcore technical people tend to have a very nice custom set up they can explain in detail.

Tell me about your Sales figures over the last five years with respect to targets or averages (if you are Sales professional)

• Be prepared to share these numbers and how you achieved them in details. eg. Direct sales compared to partnerships, deal origination in Japan compared to Overseas, average deal size, sales cycle duration, high touch relationship sales compared to high volume.

Technical Security Questions

• Explain these security standards / frameworks: ISO270001, NIST, OWASP Top 10
• Explain SQL Injection?
• How would you secure API’s?
• What’s the difference between symmetric and asymmetric cryptography?
• How do you collaborate with developers to integrate secure coding practices that accelerate CI/CD cycles?
• What is the CIA triad?
• If you have customer data, how would you rank the confidentiality of the data you need to secure?

Great Questions you can ask

What are you responsible for delivering in the next 1-3 years?

• Follow up Question. What is missing in your team to deliver on those objectives now?

How do you give feedback and evaluate employee performance?

• This is something you can’t get from a job description (JD) to understand their management style.

What opportunities for training and professional development does the company offer?

• Do they pay for certifications, send you to conferences or have a formal mentoring program?

What did you like about the previous person in the role and what can be improved?

• If there was a person in the role, this is the baseline image of who you will be compared to in the interview process.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for someone like me in this role?

• Good to ask at the end. This is an opportunity to overcome any concerns by sharing a follow up story on how you have overcome similar challenges.

Common Mistakes to avoid

• When interviewing with foreign or expat interviewers. They are interested in knowing your contribution in an example you share. Instead of just saying “We did this” they are interested in “I did this”
• Not sharing specific examples in your reply. Instead try and use the CAR method: Context, Action, Result
• During technical interview (design interview) not sharing your thought process. Like math’s homework show them how you arrived at the answer.
• Negative comments about a previous employer.
• Answers which highlight a lack of taking responsibility and point towards blaming others
• Long self introductions, I heard a candidate spent 20 minutes on a self introduction…… Unfortunately they weren’t invited to the 2nd interview.

Common Interview Questions for foreigners or overseas candidates

Why Japan?

• If you have never visited Japan this is considered a negative sign to most interviewers. I’ve heard many candidates from South East Asia say this surface level answer which does not impress “I want to come to Japan because it’s technologically advanced.”
• This is true for consumer goods. However they still use the fax machines and spreadsheets to manage enterprise data that should be in a Business Intelligence solution like Tableau.
• Interviewers are looking for a connection you have with Japan. E.g. my spouse/long term partner is Japanese, I'm studying Japanese and have deep connection with Japanese culture.

How would you navigate the culture here in Japan? How would you adjust?

• Japanese culture avoids confrontation, you are likely to get a nod even when they disagree with you. This culture focuses on harmony and building consensus to make decision.
• Must Read: Erin Meyer “the culture map” If you secure a role in Japan for the first time. I recommend asking the company to give you a buddy to help you navigate the culture.

Why did you leave your past roles?

• Japan is traditionally risk adverse when it comes to job changes. Average employment tenure is 12.4 years due to lifetime employment being the norm here.
• Be ready to explain and be consistent in your answers between interviewers. Avoid negative answers where possible. Instead focus on answers such as: career development opportunities, take on more leadership responsibilities, specialize in this tech stack, relocated to a new city, etc.

Conclusion

Preparing effectively for an interview by understanding the company, the role, the interviewers, and the cultural context sets the stage for a successful interaction. This guide aims to equip you with the insights needed to navigate the intricate dynamics of cyber security interviews in Japan.

Candidates that work with my team receive tailored interview advice and coaching to crush their interviews. If you would like to keep the conversation going to discuss more interviewing insights and best practices.

Drop me an email [email protected]

or message on LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/cybersteve/

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