Certified Protection Professional (CPP) Interview Questions

The ASIS Board Certified Protection Professional (CPPⓇ) certification is a gold standard in the security management field. It is an internationally recognized certification that proves your knowledge and competency in seven core domains of security. But just passing the exam, and earning a certificate isn’t enough. You need to go through an interview, to finally grab the job. To pass the interview successfully, you should be able to showcase that you possess the resources and experience in security and business principles, investigations, and crisis management.

To further strengthen your knowledge base, you may go through our Certified Protection Professional (CPP) Online tutorial. Our Free Practice Tests will further help attain your desired certification and become competent to your employers in an ever-changing job market. To be successful in the interview, professional standards say that you should know about the following topics in advance. And for your assistance, we have compiled below, a list of some highly expected Certified Protection Professional (CPP) Interview Questions. So let’s begin!

1. What is an organizational security program?

 A security program is the entirety of an organization’s security policies, procedures, tools, and controls. It encompasses everything that protects your organization’s sensitive data and capabilities.

2. Why is a security program important?

A security program is a documented set of your organization’s cyber security policies, procedures, guidelines, and standards. It’s critical to proactively protect data while maintaining compliance with best practices and regulatory requirements and customer standards.

3. How would you define the security risk assessment procedure?

 A Security Risk Assessment (or SRA) is a process that evaluates the risks in your company, its technology, and its processes to determine whether controls are in place to safeguard against security threats.

4. What are the types of security risk assessments?

• Facility physical vulnerability.
• Information systems vulnerability.
• Physical Security for IT.
• Insider threat.
• Workplace violence threat.
• Proprietary information risk.
• Board-level risk concerns.
• Critical process vulnerabilities.

5.  What should a security awareness program include?

• Confidentiality on the internet.
• Protecting your home computer.
• Smartphone and mobile device security.
• Working remotely and securely.
• Reporting incidents.
• Privacy and password best practices.
• Protecting sensitive information.
• Wi-Fi security.

6. What are the 3 main steps to implementing security awareness?

• Step1: Establish a behavioral baseline
• Step 2: Implement security initiatives
• Step 3: Secure behavior by design

7. How would you define financial responsibilities?

  Financial responsibility is a process of managing money and other similar assets in a way that is considered productive and which also serves the best interest of the individual, family, or business company.

8. Why is it important to be fiscally responsible?

  Fiscal responsibility is crucial to creating a better, stronger, more prosperous nation for the next generation. The choices we make today will determine what kind of future our children and grandchildren inherit 20 or 40 years from now.

9. Could you explain the term fiscal controls?

Fiscal control is simply a process that is designed to provide assurance regarding the several achievements of the objectives in the following categories: 

• Producing reliable financial information
• Promoting effectiveness and efficiency of operations
• Ensuring compliance with applicable regulations and University policy

10. How would you achieve organizational objectives?

• Brainstorming goals as a group
• Choosing from the brainstormed list those you want to attend to.
• Prioritizing as a group.
• Determining objectives and plans of action
• Moving into action
• Continuously evaluating the progress.

11. What are the 3 types of organizational goals?

• Strategic
• Tactical
• Operational goals

12. Why is staffing an important process in an organization?

Staffing helps to ensure better utilization of human resources, which in turn increases the morale and job satisfaction of the workers. It ensures continuity and growth for an organization, through development managers.

13. What are the main functions of staffing?

• Manpower Planning.
• Recruitment
• Selection
• Workforce Orientation
• Training and Development
• Performance Appraisal
• Compensation
• Promotion

14. How is staffing a continuous process?

The staffing function ensures that the positions in an organization are filled and kept filled. This is a continuous process because new jobs may be created, and some existing employees may leave.

15. What is the most important term in a contract?

The Responsibilities/Scope of Work clause is one of the most important contract terms to include in your entire contract because it clearly explains the obligations and duties of each party to the contract. This clause requires attention to detail but can be very specific in nature depending on the nature of the services being performed.

16. What elements should you consider while preparing to negotiate a vendor contract?

• Know your position.
• Know what the other side wants.
• Communicate clearly.
• Build empathy.
• Get personal.
• Avoid Fatigue.

17. How do companies monitor their employees?

Companies such as Teramind, ActivTrak, Hubstaff, and Workpuls have developed tools that log keystrokes or capture randomized screenshots of workers’ activities. Reports are compiled that help employers examine how employees spend their days.

18. Is it ethical for employers to monitor employees?

Employers can use employee monitoring technology to track the locations and activities of their staff. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 gives employers the right to monitor employees’ verbal and written communications under certain circumstances.

19. What are some of the key elements of a background investigation?

• Criminal Records History
• Credit Background Check
• Identity and Address
• Employment Verification
• Education Verification
• Credentials Verification and Licensing
• DMV and MVR Background Checks
• Reference Verification

20. What is the importance of health safety and security in a workplace?

The health and safety of your workers are important to your business. By protecting them, you reduce absences and therefore ensure a more efficient workplace. A study showed that workers are more productive in workplaces that are committed to health and safety. This reduces downtime caused by illness or accidents, which saves your company money.

21. What is the importance of physical security?

Physical security is the practice of protecting assets and facilities from unauthorized access. The most important responsibility of physical security is to safeguard employees, who are an important asset to the company. Safety and security are the first priorities, followed by securing facilities.

22. What are the physical security risks?

• Threat 1: Tailgating
• Threat 2: Theft of documents
• Threat 3: Unaccounted visitors
• Threat 4: Stolen identification
• Threat 5: Social engineering

23. What are the five components of information security?

• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Availability
• Authenticity
• Non-repudiation

24. What is meant by mitigation of consequences?

Mitigation refers to steps taken to reduce or minimize the damage caused by an attack. These steps may include pre-planned, coordinated actions designed to support first responders; facilitate field investigation and crisis management response, and facilitate recovery and reconstitution.

25. What are the seven steps in incident response?

• Preparation.
• Identification
• Containment
• Investigation
• Eradication
• Recovery
• Follow-Up

26. How should organizations respond to security incidents?

• Creating an Incident Response plan
• Creating a playbook for common security incidents
• Establishing a communication procedure and plan
• Keeping it clear and simple
• Learning from security incidents.

27. Why is an incident response plan important?

An organization’s response to an incident will help in minimizing its losses, mitigating exploited vulnerabilities, restoring services and processes, and reducing the risks that future incidents pose.

28. What is the importance of having an incident management team?

  The purpose of incident management is to restore normal operations as quickly as possible and minimize the negative impact on business operations, thereby maintaining service quality levels agreed upon by both parties.

29. How do you do disaster recovery?

• Creating an inventory
• Establishing a recovery timeline.
• Communicating
• Backing up your data.
• Considering physical damages.
• Considering the human factor.
• Considering insurance.
• Testing your disaster recovery plan.

30. What is the difference between disaster recovery and incident management?

Disaster recovery plans address larger questions about how an organization can resume normal operations after a disaster disrupts business activities. Incident response plans focus on the incident; disaster recovery plans focus on the enterprise’s ability to continue operating following the disruption.