CREST CPTIA - CREST Practitioner Threat Intelligence Analyst

Red Teams are tasked with emulating potential adversaries to test and improve the security posture of an organization. They require intelligence on the latest vulnerabilities, threat actors, and their TTPs to simulate realistic attack scenarios and identify potential weaknesses in the organization's defenses. This information helps Red Teams in crafting their attack strategies to be as realistic and relevant as possible, thereby providing valuable insights into how actual attackers might exploit the organization's systems. This need contrasts with the requirements of other teams or roles within an organization, such as strategic decision-makers, who might be more interested in intelligence relatedto strategic risks or Blue Teams, which focus on defending against and responding to attacks.References:

Red Team Field Manual (RTFM)

MITRE ATT&CK Framework for understanding threat actor TTPs

Incapsula is a cloud-based application delivery platform that offers a comprehensive security solution, including protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. By providing DDoS mitigation services, Incapsula helps protect websites and online services from being overwhelmed by traffic intended to make the resource unavailable to its intended users. The platform filters out malicious traffic and allows legitimate traffic through, thus ensuring that the organization's online resources remain available even under attack.

References:The CREST CPTIA curriculum includes discussions on various tools and strategies for protecting organizations against DoS/DDoS attacks, highlighting the importance of incorporating services like Incapsula into an organization's cybersecurity defenses to mitigate the risk and impact of such attacks.

James's activities, including creating anonymous access to cloud services to carry out attacks such as password and key cracking, hosting malicious data, and conducting DDoS attacks, exemplify the abuse and nefarious use of cloud services. This threat involves exploiting cloud computing resources to conduct malicious activities, which can impact the cloud service provider as well as other users of the cloud services. This abuse ranges from using the cloud platform's resources for computationally intensive tasks like cracking passwords or encryption keys to conducting DDoS attacks that can disrupt services for legitimate users.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) certification emphasizes understanding cloud-specific security challenges, including the abuse of cloud services, and recommends strategies for mitigating such risks, highlighting the need for comprehensive security measures to protect cloud environments.

Daniel's activities align with those typically associated with organized hackers. Organized hackers or cybercriminals work in groups with the primary goal of financial gain through illegal activities such as stealing and selling data. These groups often target large amounts of data, including personal and financial information, which they can monetize by selling on the black market or dark web. Unlike industrial spies who focuson corporate espionage or state-sponsored hackers who are backed by nation-states for political or military objectives, organized hackers are motivated by profit. Insider threats, on the other hand, come from within the organization and might not always be motivated by financial gain. The actions described in the scenario—targeting personal and financial information for sale—best fit the modus operandi of organized cybercriminal groups.References:

ENISA (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) Threat Landscape Report

Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report

For Alice to perform qualitative data analysis, techniques such as brainstorming, interviewing, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, and the Delphi technique are suitable. Unlike quantitative analysis, which involves numerical calculations and statistical modeling, qualitative analysis focuses on understanding patterns, themes, and narratives within the data. These techniques enable the analyst to explore the data's deeper meanings and insights, which are essential for strategic decision-making and developing a nuanced understanding of cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.References:

"Qualitative Research Methods in Cybersecurity," SANS Institute Reading Room

"The Delphi Method for Cybersecurity Risk Assessment," by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

The "known unknowns" stage in cyber-threat intelligence refers to the phase where an analyst has identified threats but the specific details, implications, or full nature of these threats are not yet fully understood. Michael, in this scenario, has obtained information on threats and is in the process of analyzing this information to understand the nature of the threats better. This stage involves analyzing the known data to uncover additional insights and fill in the gaps in understanding, thereby transitioning the "unknowns" into "knowns." This phase is critical in threat intelligence as it helps in developing actionable intelligence by deepening the understanding of the threats faced.References:

"Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach," by Robert M. Clark

"Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis," by Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson

Incident triage is the phase in the Incident Handling and Response (IH&R) process where identified security incidents are analyzed, validated, categorized, and prioritized. This step is crucial for determining the severity of incidents and deciding on the order in which they should be addressed. During triage, incident handlers assess the impact, urgency, and potential harm of an incident to prioritize their response efforts effectively. This ensures that resources are allocated efficiently, and the most critical incidents are handled first. Incident recording and assignment involve logging incidents and assigning them to handlers, containment focuses on limiting the extent of damage, and notification involves informing stakeholders about the incident.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) courses and study guides detail the IH&R process, emphasizing the importance of triage in managing and responding to security incidents effectively.

Thenetstat -abcommand is useful in Windows operating systems for displaying all connections and listening ports, along with the executable involved in creating each connection or listening port. This can be particularly valuable for an incident responder like James when attempting to determine which processes are running on a system and how they are communicating over the network. This information can help identify malicious processes, unauthorized connections, or other signs of compromise on the system. Whilenetstat -abdoes not exclusively list executable files for running processes, it ties processes to network activity, which is a critical part of collecting volatile information during a cybersecurity incident investigation.

References:The Certified Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) course by EC-Council covers various commands and tools that can be used to collect volatile data from systems as part of incident response activities, highlighting the importance of understanding network connections and the processes responsible for them.

Incorporating a scoring feature in a Threat Intelligence (TI) platform allows SecurityTech Inc. to evaluate and prioritize intelligence sources, threat actors, specific types of attacks, and the organization's digital assets based on their relevance and threat level to the organization. This prioritization helps in allocating resources more effectively, focusing on protecting critical assets and countering the most significant threats. A scoring system can be based on various criteria such as the severity of threats, the value of assets, the reliability of intelligence sources, and the potential impact of threat actors or attack vectors. By quantifying these elements, SecurityTech Inc. can make informed decisions on where to invest its limited funds to enhance its security posture most effectively.References:

"Designing and Building a Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability" by the SANS Institute

"Threat Intelligence: What It Is, and How to Use It Effectively" by Gartner

The term that describes the combination of strategies and services intended to restore data, applications, and other resources to the public cloud or dedicated service providers is "Cloud recovery." This term encompasses disaster recovery efforts focused on ensuring that an organization's digital assets can be quickly and effectively restored or moved to cloud environments in the event of data loss, system failure, or a disaster. Cloud recovery strategies are part of a broader disaster recovery and business continuity planning, ensuring minimal downtime anddata loss by leveraging cloud computing's scalability and flexibility. Mitigation, analysis, and eradication are terms associated with other aspects of incident response and risk management, not specifically with the restoration of resources to cloud environments.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) curriculum includes discussions on disaster recovery and business continuity planning, highlighting cloud recovery as a vital component of ensuring organizational resilience against disruptions.