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350-201
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CCNP Cybersecurity Core

The Cisco CyberOps Professional Core (CBRCOR 350-201) trains SOC analysts and security engineers in threat intelligence, incident response, forensic analysis, and security automation, preparing them to protect enterprise environments.

120
Minutes
65
Questions
$400
Exam Cost

Who Should Take This

It is intended for mid‑career security professionals who have three to five years of hands‑on experience in SOC operations, SIEM/SOAR tooling, and network or endpoint protection. These learners aim to validate their expertise, advance to senior SOC roles, and demonstrate mastery of Cisco’s security framework.

What's Covered

1 All domains in the Cisco CyberOps Professional CBRCOR (350-201) exam: Fundamentals
2 , Techniques
3 , Processes
4 , and Automation

What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI

Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats

Course Outline

63 learning goals
1 Domain 1: Cybersecurity Fundamentals
3 topics

Threat landscape and attack vectors

  • Implement classification of threat actors by motivation, capability, and targeting patterns including nation-state APTs, cybercriminal organizations, hacktivists, and insider threats in enterprise environments.
  • Analyze common attack vectors including phishing, watering hole attacks, supply chain compromise, drive-by downloads, and credential stuffing to determine appropriate detection and prevention controls.
  • Implement network-based attack identification for reconnaissance, exploitation, lateral movement, and data exfiltration using packet capture analysis, NetFlow records, and DNS query logs.
  • Design a threat landscape monitoring program that integrates Cisco Talos intelligence feeds, open-source threat reports, and industry ISACs to maintain situational awareness of emerging threats.

Security frameworks and compliance

  • Apply the NIST Cybersecurity Framework functions of Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover to map organizational security capabilities and identify coverage gaps.
  • Implement MITRE ATT&CK framework mapping for observed adversary techniques, linking detection rules and security controls to specific tactics, techniques, and sub-techniques across enterprise and mobile matrices.
  • Analyze the relationship between compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2 and operational security controls to determine how SOC monitoring satisfies regulatory audit evidence requirements.
  • Design a risk-based security control selection process using NIST SP 800-53 control families, CIS Controls, and organizational risk appetite to prioritize security investments.

Cryptography and PKI operations

  • Implement TLS inspection and certificate validation procedures on Cisco Secure Firewall and Secure Web Appliance to detect encrypted threats while maintaining chain-of-trust integrity.
  • Analyze PKI certificate chain failures, expired certificates, and certificate pinning mismatches to diagnose connectivity issues and potential man-in-the-middle attacks in enterprise environments.
  • Implement hashing algorithms for file integrity monitoring and forensic evidence validation using SHA-256 and MD5 comparisons in incident investigation workflows.
2 Domain 2: Threat Intelligence and Hunting
3 topics

Threat intelligence lifecycle and sources

  • Implement a threat intelligence collection process using STIX/TAXII protocols, Cisco Talos feeds, and open-source intelligence sources to aggregate indicators of compromise into a threat intelligence platform.
  • Analyze indicator of compromise quality by evaluating confidence scores, timeliness, relevance, and source reliability to prioritize actionable intelligence over noise.
  • Design a threat intelligence dissemination strategy that maps intelligence products to consumer roles including SOC analysts, incident responders, and executive leadership with appropriate detail levels.

MITRE ATT&CK-based threat hunting

  • Implement hypothesis-driven threat hunts using MITRE ATT&CK technique mappings to search for evidence of specific adversary behaviors in network telemetry, endpoint logs, and authentication records.
  • Implement threat hunting queries using Cisco Secure Network Analytics flow data and behavioral baselines to detect anomalous lateral movement, data staging, and command-and-control beaconing patterns.
  • Analyze threat hunt findings to distinguish true positive adversary activity from benign anomalies, correlating evidence across multiple data sources to build investigation timelines.
  • Design a repeatable threat hunting program with defined cadence, hypothesis generation methodology, success metrics, and feedback loops that convert hunt findings into persistent detection rules.

Endpoint and network IOC analysis

  • Implement IOC extraction from Cisco Secure Endpoint telemetry including file hashes, registry modifications, process trees, and network connections to build behavioral indicators of compromise.
  • Analyze DNS query patterns, HTTP user-agent anomalies, and JA3/JA3S TLS fingerprints from Cisco Umbrella and Secure Firewall logs to identify malicious communication channels.
  • Implement YARA rule creation and Snort signature development to codify discovered IOCs into reusable detection content deployable across Cisco security platforms.
3 Domain 3: Incident Response and Forensics
4 topics

Incident response lifecycle

  • Implement the NIST SP 800-61 incident response lifecycle phases of Preparation, Detection and Analysis, Containment Eradication and Recovery, and Post-Incident Activity for security events in enterprise networks.
  • Implement incident severity classification and escalation procedures using predefined criteria for impact scope, data sensitivity, and business criticality to ensure appropriate response resource allocation.
  • Analyze incident timeline reconstruction using log correlation from Cisco SecureX, SIEM event sequences, and endpoint telemetry to determine initial access vector, dwell time, and scope of compromise.
  • Design a post-incident review process that generates actionable lessons learned, updates detection rules, refines playbooks, and measures mean-time-to-detect and mean-time-to-respond improvements.

Digital forensics and evidence handling

  • Implement forensic evidence collection procedures including disk imaging, memory acquisition, network packet capture, and log preservation while maintaining chain of custody documentation.
  • Analyze Windows and Linux filesystem artifacts including prefetch files, shellbags, NTFS journal entries, cron jobs, and bash history to reconstruct adversary actions on compromised hosts.
  • Analyze volatile memory dumps to identify injected processes, rootkit hooks, network connections, and encryption keys that would not survive system reboot.
  • Implement network forensics using full packet capture analysis to extract transferred files, reconstruct sessions, and identify data exfiltration channels from Cisco Secure Firewall and span port captures.

Malware analysis and reverse engineering

  • Implement static malware analysis techniques including PE header inspection, string extraction, import table review, and packer identification to classify suspicious executables without execution.
  • Implement dynamic malware analysis using sandboxed detonation environments to observe runtime behavior including process creation, file system modifications, registry changes, and network communications.
  • Analyze malware families using behavioral clustering and code similarity to attribute samples to known threat actor campaigns and predict likely follow-on adversary actions.
  • Implement Cisco Secure Endpoint retrospective detection to trace file disposition changes across the organization when new malware intelligence reclassifies previously clean files as malicious.

Containment and eradication strategies

  • Implement network-level containment using Cisco ISE adaptive network control, Secure Firewall dynamic access policies, and VLAN quarantine to isolate compromised hosts while preserving forensic evidence.
  • Analyze containment tradeoffs between full network isolation, selective service blocking, and credential revocation to minimize business disruption while preventing adversary persistence and lateral movement.
  • Design an eradication and recovery strategy that validates complete adversary removal through IOC sweeps, reimaging procedures, credential rotation, and controlled service restoration with enhanced monitoring.
4 Domain 4: Security Automation and SOC Operations
5 topics

SOAR and playbook development

  • Implement automated enrichment workflows in Cisco SecureX orchestration that query threat intelligence APIs, WHOIS databases, and passive DNS to augment alert context before analyst triage.
  • Implement SOAR playbooks for common incident types including phishing response, malware containment, and unauthorized access that orchestrate actions across Cisco Secure Endpoint, Umbrella, ISE, and email security.
  • Analyze SOAR playbook effectiveness by measuring automation rates, false positive reduction, analyst time savings, and mean-time-to-respond improvements to identify optimization opportunities.
  • Design a playbook governance framework that defines approval workflows, version control, testing requirements, and rollback procedures for production SOAR automation deployments.

Python scripting and API integration

  • Implement Python scripts using the requests library and Cisco platform REST APIs to automate security data collection from Secure Endpoint, Umbrella Investigate, and Threat Grid.
  • Implement API-driven automated response actions including blocking malicious domains via Umbrella enforcement API, quarantining endpoints via Secure Endpoint API, and updating firewall rules via Secure Firewall Management Center API.
  • Implement log parsing and event correlation scripts using Python regex, JSON processing, and pandas dataframes to identify patterns across heterogeneous security data sources.
  • Analyze API rate limits, authentication token management, error handling patterns, and retry logic to build resilient security automation that operates reliably at enterprise scale.

SIEM tuning and correlation

  • Implement SIEM correlation rules that combine events from multiple data sources including firewall logs, endpoint alerts, authentication events, and DNS queries to detect multi-stage attack patterns.
  • Analyze SIEM alert volumes, false positive rates, and detection fidelity metrics to tune correlation rules, adjust thresholds, and suppress known benign patterns without reducing threat visibility.
  • Implement log source onboarding including syslog configuration, data normalization, field mapping, and retention policy settings for Cisco and third-party security event sources.
  • Design a SIEM content lifecycle management strategy that governs rule creation, testing, deployment, performance review, and retirement to maintain detection quality as the threat landscape evolves.

SOC metrics and continuous improvement

  • Implement SOC operational dashboards that visualize key performance indicators including alerts triaged, escalation rates, MTTD, MTTR, and analyst workload distribution across shift schedules.
  • Analyze SOC maturity using capability assessment frameworks to identify gaps in people, process, and technology dimensions and prioritize improvement initiatives.
  • Design a purple team exercise program that combines red team attack simulations with blue team detection validation to measure and improve SOC detection coverage mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques.

Cloud and hybrid security operations

  • Implement security monitoring for cloud workloads using Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics to detect anomalous network flows, east-west traffic patterns, and unauthorized cloud service usage in AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.
  • Analyze shared responsibility model implications for security operations to determine which detection and response capabilities must be provided by the organization versus the cloud provider.
  • Design a unified security operations strategy that integrates on-premises Cisco security telemetry with cloud-native security services and CASB controls to provide consistent visibility across hybrid environments.
5 Domain 5: Advanced SOC Operations
3 topics

Advanced detection engineering

  • Implement behavioral detection rules using Sigma rule format that detect techniques rather than specific tools, enabling detection resilience when adversaries change tooling but maintain procedural patterns.
  • Analyze detection rule coverage against the MITRE ATT&CK matrix to identify technique-level detection gaps and prioritize rule development based on threat intelligence relevance.
  • Implement user and entity behavior analytics baselines using Cisco Secure Network Analytics to detect anomalous authentication patterns, privilege escalation, and data access deviations.

Vulnerability management integration

  • Implement vulnerability assessment data integration into SOC workflows to correlate active exploitation attempts with known vulnerable assets using CVSS scoring and asset criticality ratings.
  • Analyze vulnerability exploitation risk by combining threat intelligence on actively exploited CVEs, asset exposure data, and compensating control effectiveness to prioritize patching and mitigation.
  • Design a vulnerability-driven detection strategy that creates targeted detection rules for high-risk unpatched vulnerabilities and monitors for exploitation indicators until remediation is confirmed.

Identity-centric security operations

  • Implement identity-based threat detection using Cisco ISE and Duo telemetry to monitor authentication anomalies, impossible travel, and MFA bypass attempts across the enterprise identity perimeter.
  • Analyze privilege escalation attack paths by correlating Active Directory group memberships, service account permissions, and Kerberos ticket anomalies to identify credential compromise scope.
  • Design a zero-trust security monitoring strategy that enforces continuous verification of user identity, device posture, and access context using Cisco ISE, Duo, and Secure Access to limit blast radius of credential compromise.

Scope

Included Topics

  • All domains in the Cisco CyberOps Professional CBRCOR (350-201) exam: Fundamentals (20%), Techniques (30%), Processes (30%), and Automation (20%).
  • Professional-level cybersecurity operations including threat landscape analysis, NIST and MITRE ATT&CK frameworks, threat intelligence lifecycle, indicator of compromise analysis, incident response procedures, digital forensics, malware analysis, and security automation.
  • Key Cisco security technologies and platforms: Cisco SecureX, Cisco XDR, Secure Network Analytics (Stealthwatch), Secure Endpoint (AMP), Secure Firewall (Firepower), Secure Email, Secure Web Appliance, Umbrella, ISE, Talos threat intelligence, and Cisco SOAR.
  • Scenario-driven SOC operations requiring integration of detection, triage, investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery across enterprise network and endpoint environments.
  • Security automation and orchestration using Python scripting, REST APIs, SOAR playbooks, and Cisco platform APIs for automated threat response and enrichment workflows.

Not Covered

  • Cisco hardware installation, physical cabling, and data center infrastructure topics covered by CCT-level certifications.
  • Non-Cisco product-specific administration detail unless required to reason about interoperability at the SOC integration boundary.
  • Academic cryptography proofs, formal verification methods, and theoretical security models beyond practical operational application.
  • Cisco IOS and NX-OS command-level syntax memorization and platform-specific CLI deep dives outside security operations context.
  • Current pricing for Cisco security products and rapidly changing licensing models not durable for a long-lived domain specification.

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