Cybersecurity Defense Analyst Pathway Exam Answers
Cybersecurity Defense Analyst Pathway Exam Answers
The Cybersecurity Defense Analyst Pathway Exam Answers provide a comprehensive and trusted resource for learners preparing to enter one of the most critical roles in modern cybersecurity operations. This collection features verified questions and accurate answers covering essential topics such as threat detection, security monitoring, incident response, log analysis, and the effective use of tools like SIEM platforms. Designed to align with the latest exam objectives for 2026, it helps students strengthen practical skills, build confidence, and successfully navigate the pathway toward becoming a skilled cybersecurity defense analyst.
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Which of the frameworks mentioned in this course includes a set of outcomes organized as Functions and Categories that cover cybersecurity objectives?
- NIST CSF
- CIS 18
- ISO/IEC 27000 Series
- OWASP Top Ten
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Which standard or regulation deals with Credit Card Information?
- PCI-DSS
- HIPAA
- EU-GDPR
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What is Authentication in the context of the CIA Triad?
- Being able to verify the identity of a user, process or device
- The access that should be granted to a user, process or device
- Ensuring that protected information is only seen by those who are meant to see it
- No party can deny the validity of the data
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How would you classify the information in a company’s social media post?
- As public data
- As private data
- As confidential data
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The Splunk T-Shirt company identifies an internal server running an unpatched version of software. This is an example of:
- A vulnerability
- A Risk
- A Threat
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A list of email addresses from customers of the Splunk T-Shirt company has been disclosed by accident. What are the most likely impacts of this incident? (Choose two)
- Damage to the company’s reputation
- Increased risk of identity theft for individuals
- The company will have to pay attorney’s fees
- Interruption of critical services
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Employees in the Shipping department of the Splunk T-Shirt company require access to customer addresses to fulfill orders, however they do not require access to customer’s credit card details. This is an example of what part of the CIA Triad?
- Authorization
- Authentication
- Availability
- Authenticity
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In the context of cyber attacks, what is considered a “bot”?
- A compromised device that has become part of a network of compromised devices
- A server used to test and investigate pieces of malware in a controlled environment
- A device that controls other compromised devices in a bigger network
- An AI operated piece of malware
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In which credential access technique do adversaries use a single list of commonly used passwords against different accounts to attempt to acquire valid account credentials?
- Password Spraying
- Credential Stuffing
- Password Cracking
- Rainbow Table
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DOS and DDOS Attacks are techniques that attackers use to accomplish which tactic?
- Impact
- Exfiltration
- Command and Control
- Execution
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According to the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain (R), in which phase does an intruder create a remote access malware tailored to an identified vulnerability?
- Weaponization
- Exploitation
- Installation
- Actions on objectives
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Assuming that an event has been mapped to the “Actions on Objective” phase of the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain (R) , which is the previous phase an Analyst could focus on to search for other related events?
- Weaponization
- Exploitation
- Installation
- Command and Control
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Which of the following is NOT one of the main components of the Diamond Model in its simplest form?
- Adversary
- Infrastructure
- Defense Tools
- Capabilities
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True or false: Insider threats are always malicious in nature?
- FALSE
- TRUE
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Which Analytic Framework provides a detailed account of tactics, techniques and procedures?
- MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Matrix
- Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain
- Diamond Model
- CVE List
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With the provided context, what disposition would you assign to this event?
- True Positive
- False Positive
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Which of the following are elements of Cybersecurity Operations? (Choose all that apply)
- People
- Policies and regulations
- Processes
- Technologies
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The security posture of an organization represents how well it can predict, prevent, and ________ to cyber threats.
- ignore
- delay
- transfer
- respond
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Which stages of the Continuous Monitoring cycle is the Cybersecurity Defense Analyst primarily associated with?
- Define and predict
- Establish and architect
- Implement and collect
- Analyze and report
- Respond and review
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According to the Blue Team Academy definitions, which of these activities are performed more often by the Cybersecurity Defense Analyst in a SOC? (Select 2)
- Alert Triage
- Threat Hunting
- Creating new detection rules
- Ensuring data is brought to the corresponding SIEM
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An Analyst in the Wonderland SOC needs to analyze some network traffic, captured in a packet capture (.pcap) file. They need a GUI based tool to use. Which of the following tools should they use?
- Tshark
- tcpdump
- Wireshark
- CyberChef
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An Analyst in the Wonderland SOC needs to capture and analyze network traffic in a packet capture (.pcap) file. They need a command-line based tool to use. Which of the following tools could they use?
- tcpdump
- Tshark
- Wireshark
- CyberChef
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One of the Wonderland SOC Analysts needs an App for Splunk. Where can they learn about and download Apps?
- Splunkbase
- Splunk Lantern
- Splunk Security Essentials
- The SplunkPlay Store
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A suspicious change to a Windows registry setting in a user machine resulted in an alert. Which of the following data sources would be the best source of information to research this event with?
- Endpoint Logs
- Network Firewall Logs
- VPC Flow Logs
- LDAP Logs
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Which of the following SPL commands would you use if you wanted to group related events together based on a common field?
- Transaction
- Rex
- Lookup
- Tstats
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Which of the following would NOT help increase search efficiency?
- Restrict time ranges whenever possible.
- Use filters and sub-searches to narrow results and drill down into more granular details.
- Use appropriate index and source type filters to include only applicable data in your search.
- Use wildcards for indexes or sourcetypes to ensure all data is searched.
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How are file hashes useful to cyber defense analysts?
- They may be used to identify malicious files by comparing the hash of a suspicious file against already known malicious ones.
- They may be used to identify the origin of an attack by country.
- They provide a way to exchanging CTI over HTTPS.
- File hashes are not generally used by cyber defense analysts due to their complex nature.
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Which of the following Data Models would you search if you needed insights about activities such as file access, process execution, network connections, or other system changes on a user’s workstation?
- Endpoint Data Model
- Malware Data Model
- Authentication Data Model
- Email Data Model
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In ride-along #3, we identified that spools.exe was the parent process for the process vssadmin, which is suspicious.Which of the Windows Event Codes would you use in a search if you want to review logs related to a newly created process?
- EventCode 1
- EventCode 4689
- EventCode 8
- EventCode 15
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During ride-along #3, our search results for DNS queries and responses uncovered unique hostnames that helped us identify a MITRE ATT&CK™ technique related to masking Command and Control traffic.
What type of hostnames were these?
- CDN Provider sites
- CNAME records
- ToR nodes
- Web proxies
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Ride-along #1:
During our insider threat investigations for Frothly Beverages, we used a command to visualize an employee’s logins across a map.
Which of the following commands did we use in our SPL search to accomplish this?
- geostats
- stats
- eval
- table
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In ride-along #2, we used a tag in our SPL search to display logs in the web data model but not all the expected data appeared.
Aside from having the correct tag, what other requirement would the data in Splunk have to be part of the web data model?
- Be CIM compliant
- Come from a web proxy
- Include only HTTP GET requests
- Come from the stream app
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The following are field names used in your logs to identify a source IP address: src, SourceIP, sIP.
Select the SPL search that will result in the information from all disparate fields being combined into a single field called SourceIP.
- index=main sourcetype=cp_log | eval SourceIP = coalesce(src,SourceIP,sIP)
- index=main sourcetype=cp_log | stats count as SourceIP
- index=main sourcetype=cp_log | eval SourceIP = dedup(src,SourceIP,sIP)
- index=main sourcetype=cp_log | iplocation=coalesce(src,SourceIP,sIP)
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Which phase of the PEAK Threat Hunting Framework involves understanding the environment and selecting a hypothesis?
- Prepare
- Execute
- Act
- Analyze
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What is the primary purpose of the scientific method in hypothesis-driven threat hunting?
- To structure hypothesis formation and testing
- To execute threat hunting activities
- To document findings for future use
- To identify anomalies in log data
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What is a key advantage of using Model-Assisted Threat Hunting (M-ATH) in cybersecurity?
- It eliminates the need for human analysts in threat detection.
- It uses Machine Learning to detect threats that traditional methods may miss.
- It focuses solely on data collection without requiring model training.
- It relies exclusively on predefined rules for identifying anomalies.
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What is the primary purpose of using the Interquartile Range (IQR) in threat hunting?
- To identify the central tendency of a dataset
- To detect outliers by analyzing data dispersion
- To calculate the standard deviation of a dataset
- To determine the uniqueness of values in a dataset
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Which phase of the PEAK Threat Hunting Framework involves carrying out the threat hunting activities based on the prepared plan?
- Prepare
- Execute
- Act
- Analyze
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Why is understanding data cardinality important in threat hunting?
- It helps in recognizing the uniqueness of values in a dataset.
- It ensures that all data is encrypted during transmission.
- It simplifies the process of creating machine learning models.
- It guarantees the accuracy of statistical methods used in your hunt.
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How does Threat Hunting help cybersecurity analysts beyond identifying threats? (choose two)
- It helps analysts’ understand their environment better.
- It automates all cybersecurity processes.
- It provides an opportunity to improve SPL skills.
- It eliminates the need for collaboration within teams.
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What is the primary purpose of a SOAR playbook in Splunk Enterprise Security?
- To store and manage threat intelligence data
- To provide real-time dashboards for monitoring security events
- To automate repetitive security tasks and streamline workflows
- To define user roles and permissions within the security platform
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What is a recommended approach to managing detections in Splunk Enterprise Security (ES)?
- Use only pre-configured detection rules without modification.
- Focus solely on high-severity detections and ignore low-severity ones.
- Regularly review and update detection rules to address evolving threats.
- Disable detections that generate too many alerts.
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Which of the following best describes how SOAR playbooks enhance security operations?
- By centralizing all security policies for easier management
- By automating routine tasks and integrating tools for faster response
- By generating detailed reports on past security incidents
- By providing manual workflows for incident response
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Which key component does the Risk-Based Alerting Framework rely on to assess and prioritize threats in Splunk Enterprise Security?
- Adaptive Response Actions
- Threat Intelligence Framework
- Risk Scores
- Asset and Identity Framework
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By default, who is able to view a saved report?
- The user who created it
- Any user with a power or admin role
- The user who created it or any user with an admin role
- Any user with the viewreports capability
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What is the most efficient way to limit search results returned?
- time
- source
- index
- host
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Which command can be used to further filter results in a search?
- subsearch
- filter
- search
- subset
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When a search is run, in what order are events returned?
- Reverse chronological order
- Alphanumeric order
- Chronological order
- Reverse alphanumeric order
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Which of the following booleans can be used in a search? (choose all that apply)
- AND
- OR
- NOT
- ALSO
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Which of the following searches will return results containing the words fail, failure, or failed?
- *fail
- fail
- fail*
- fail+