AN ORDERED STUDY PLAN
Security & performance learning roadmap.
Protect application boundaries and investigate production failures. Work through 3 modules, then use the connected questions to check what you can explain without the notes.
- STEP 1
Performance
- What do Big-O and profiling tell me? · 2 min
- How do I identify the slow part of an API? · 2 min
- When should I use pagination, streaming, compression or a CDN? · 2 min
Checkpoint: explain the ideas above with an example and a limitation before continuing.
- STEP 2
Security
- Authentication vs authorization vs RBAC? · 2 min
- What makes JWT or session authentication safe? · 2 min
- How should I store passwords and secrets? · 2 min
- XSS vs CSRF vs CORS? · 2 min
- How do I prevent SQL injection, NoSQL injection and SSRF? · 2 min
- What are least privilege, TLS and secure headers? · 2 min
- Is rate limiting enough to prevent every attack? · 2 min
Checkpoint: explain the ideas above with an example and a limitation before continuing.
- STEP 3
Observability
Checkpoint: explain the ideas above with an example and a limitation before continuing.
Check your understanding
After the lessons, rehearse the 21 connected questions. Revisit the lesson when you cannot yet explain why the answer works.
Practice Security & performance Review the interview guide