Cisco 200-201 Exam Topics, Blueprint and Syllabus

• Network, endpoint, and application security systems
• Agentless and agent-based protections
• Legacy antivirus and antimalware
• SIEM, SOAR, and log management

3. Describe security terms

• Threat intelligence (TI)
• Threat hunting
• Malware analysis
• Threat actor
• Run book automation (RBA)
• Reverse engineering
• Sliding window anomaly detection
• Principle of least privilege
• Zero trust
• Threat intelligence platform (TIP)

4. Compare security concepts

• Risk (risk scoring/risk weighting, risk reduction, risk assessment)
• Threat
• Vulnerability
• Exploit

5. Describe the principles of the defense-in-depth strategy
6. Compare access control models

• Discretionary access control
• Mandatory access control
• Nondiscretionary access control
• Authentication, authorization, accounting
• Rule-based access control
• Time-based access control
• Role-based access control

7. Describe terms as defined in CVSS

• Attack vector
• Attack complexity
• Privileges required
• User interaction
• Scope

8. Identify the challenges of data visibility (network, host, and cloud) in detection
9. Identify potential data loss from provided traffic profiles
10. Interpret the 5-tuple approach to isolate a compromised host in a grouped set of logs
11. Compare rule-based detection vs. behavioral and statistical detection

• TCP dump
• NetFlow
• Next-gen firewall
• Traditional stateful firewall
• Application visibility and control
• Web content filtering
• Email content filtering

3. Describe the impact of these technologies on data visibility

• Access control list
• NAT/PAT
• Tunneling
• TOR
• Encryption
• P2P
• Encapsulation
• Load balancing

4. Describe the uses of these data types in security monitoring

• Full packet capture
• Session data
• Transaction data
• Statistical data
• Metadata
• Alert data

5. Describe network attacks, such as protocol-based, denial of service, distributed denial of service, and man-in-the-middle
6. Describe web application attacks, such as SQL injection, command injections, and cross-site scripting
7. Describe social engineering attacks
8. Describe endpoint-based attacks, such as buffer overflows, command and control (C2), malware, and ransomware
9. Describe evasion and obfuscation techniques, such as tunneling, encryption, and proxies
10. Describe the impact of certificates on security (includes PKI, public/private crossing the network, asymmetric/symmetric)
11. Identify the certificate components in a given scenario

• Cipher-suite
• X.509 certificates
• Key exchange
• Protocol version
• PKCS

• Host-based intrusion detection
• Antimalware and antivirus
• Host-based firewall
• Application-level listing/block listing
• Systems-based sandboxing (such as Chrome, Java, Adobe Reader)

2. Identify components of an operating system (such as Windows and Linux) in a given scenario
3. Describe the role of attribution in an investigation

• Assets
• Threat actor
• Indicators of compromise
• Indicators of attack
• Chain of custody

4. Identify type of evidence used based on provided logs

• Best evidence
• Corroborative evidence
• Indirect evidence

5. Compare tampered and untampered disk image
6. Interpret operating system, application, or command line logs to identify an event
7. Interpret the output report of a malware analysis tool (such as a detonation chamber or sandbox)

• Hashes
• URLs
• Systems, events, and networking

• IDS/IPS
• Firewall
• Network application control
• Proxy logs
• Antivirus
• Transaction data (NetFlow)

2. Compare impact and no impact for these items

• False positive
• False negative
• True positive
• True negative
• Benign

3. Compare deep packet inspection with packet filtering and stateful firewall operation
4. Compare inline traffic interrogation and taps or traffic monitoring
5. Compare the characteristics of data obtained from taps or traffic monitoring and transactional data (NetFlow) in the analysis of network traffic
6. Extract files from a TCP stream when given a PCAP file and Wireshark
7. Identify key elements in an intrusion from a given PCAP file

• Source address
• Destination address
• Source port
• Destination port
• Protocols
• Payloads

8. Interpret the fields in protocol headers as related to intrusion analysis

• Ethernet frame
• IPv4
• IPv6
• TCP
• UDP
• ICMP
• DNS
• SMTP/POP3/IMAP
• HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2
• ARP

9. Interpret common artifact elements from an event to identify an alert

• IP address (source / destination)
• Client and server port identity
• Process (file or registry)
• System (API calls)
• Hashes
• URI / URL

10. Interpret basic regular expressions

• Asset management
• Configuration management
• Mobile device management
• Patch management
• Vulnerability management

2. Describe the elements in an incident response plan as stated in NIST.SP800-61
3. Apply the incident handling process (such as NIST.SP800-61) to an event
4. Map elements to these steps of analysis based on the NIST.SP800-61

• Preparation
• Detection and analysis
• Containment, eradication, and recovery
• Post-incident analysis (lessons learned)

5. Map the organization stakeholders against the NIST IR categories (CMMC, NIST.SP800-61)

• Preparation
• Detection and analysis
• Containment, eradication, and recovery
• Post-incident analysis (lessons learned)

6. Describe concepts as documented in NIST.SP800-86

• Evidence collection order
• Data integrity
• Data preservation
• Volatile data collection

7. Identify these elements used for network profiling

• Total throughput
• Session duration
• Ports used
• Critical asset address space

8. Identify these elements used for server profiling

• Listening ports
• Logged in users/service accounts
• Running processes
• Running tasks
• Applications

9. Identify protected data in a network

• PII
• PSI
• PHI
• Intellectual property

10. Classify intrusion events into categories as defined by security models, such as Cyber Kill Chain Model and Diamond Model of Intrusion
11. Describe the relationship of SOC metrics to scope analysis (time to detect, time to contain, time to respond, time to control)