200-201 Exam Dumps - Cisco CyberOps Associate Questions and Answers

A threat agent is the entity that is responsible for initiating a threat action that exploits a vulnerability. A threat agent can be a person, a group, an organization, or a system. In this scenario, the threat agent is the foreign government that hacked the defense contractor and stole the intellectual property. The threat agent’s motivation, capability, and resources determine the level of threat they pose to the target. References: Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CBROPS) - Cisco, page 1-3; 200-201 CBROPS - Cisco, exam topic 1.1.b

The log in the exhibit is generated by a firewall. It shows a deny action taken on TCP traffic, specifying the source and destination addresses and ports, which is characteristic of firewall logs. Firewalls are designed to control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules, and this log entry reflects the enforcement of such a rule.

References :=

• Cisco’s official documentation on firewall technologies and their log formats.

The exhibit shows a high rate of SYN packets being sent from multiple sources towards a single destination IP. This is indicative of a SYN flood attack, where the attacker sends a succession of SYN requests to a target’s system in an attempt to consume enough server resources to make the system unresponsive to legitimate traffic. References := Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals - Module 4: Network Intrusion Analysis

In a Security Operations Center (SOC) environment, a vulnerability management metric is a quantifiable measure used to assess the effectiveness of the vulnerability management program. A full assets scan is a metric that can be used to determine the coverage and frequency of vulnerability scans across all assets. This helps in identifying unscanned assets and ensuring that all parts of the network are regularly checked for vulnerabilities1.

References :=

• SOC Metrics: Security Metrics & KPIs for Measuring SOC Success
• Vulnerability Management Metrics: 5 Metrics to Start Measuring in Your Vulnerability Management Program
• Top 10 Vulnerability Management Metrics & KPIs To Measure Success

The scenario described is indicative of a port scanning attack. Port scanning is a method used by attackers to discover open ports on network devices. A single SYN packet sent to each port is a technique known as SYN scanning or half-open scanning, where the attacker sends a SYN message (as if they are going to initiate a TCP connection) to every port on the server, looking for positive responses which indicate an open port. This type of scanning is less intrusive and harder to detect because it never completes the TCP three-way handshake1.

References: Cisco community resources on Denial of Service (DoS) attacks

When a company workstation is compromised, the stakeholders that must be involved are the ones who are responsible for the security incident response process. According to the table, these are Employee 4 (Security Operation Center Analyst), Employee 6 (Head of Network and Security Infrastructure Services), and Employee 7 (Technical Director). The other employees have different roles that are not directly related to the incident response process, such as accounting, financial management, or system administration. References := Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CBROPS) v1.0, Module 1: Security Concepts, Lesson 1.4: Security Monitoring, Topic 1.4.1: Security Operations Center

• Indicators of Attack (IoA) refer to observable behaviors or artifacts that suggest a security breach or ongoing attack.
• When internal hosts communicate with countries outside the business range, it may indicate data exfiltration or command-and-control communication to an external threat actor.
• Unlike Indicators of Compromise (IoC) which indicate that a system has already been compromised, IoAs are often used to identify malicious activity in its early stages.
• Monitoring for unusual outbound connections is a crucial aspect of detecting advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other sophisticated attacks.

References

• Difference Between Indicators of Compromise and Indicators of Attack
• Cyber Threat Detection Using Indicators of Attack
• Network Monitoring for Anomalous Behavior

NAT (Network Address Translation) and PAT (Port Address Translation) are technologies that modify the IP address information in packet headers as they pass through a router or firewall, making it difficult to trace the communication back to the originating end-device.

An attack vector is the method or technique that an attacker uses to exploit a vulnerability in a system or network. An attack vector can be a software, hardware, or human component that can be manipulated to gain unauthorized access, execute malicious code, or cause damage. An attack surface is the sum of all the possible attack vectors that are exposed by a system or network. An attack surface can be reduced by applying security measures such as patching, hardening, firewalling, and encrypting. References: Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CBROPS) - Cisco, page 1-4; 200-201 CBROPS - Cisco, exam topic 1.1.c