hey bro, the best way to maintain your strength is to definitely ease into the cut. if you were eating 4k calories a day you definitely don't want to drop to 3k or under straight away.
taper it down slowly, maybe 100 calories every 3-4 days until you're a couple hundred under you're maintenance calories, whatever that may be
unless you're trying to get to 5% bodybuilding shredded, you shouldn't lose much strength. keep training hard and heavy and don't do anything drastic in regards to diet and you'll be fine
as for cardio its really up to, the more cardio you do, the more you can eat. but tbh its really not gonna be beneficial for trying to maintain your strength, shit like prowler sled etc could really feed into your squatting strength, especially in a deficit.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlfsM45VQPU&feature=plcp]Maintaining Strength while CUTTING - Q&A Eric Helms - YouTube[/ame]
watch that vid, dude definitely knows his shit and will help out heaps
good luck