A SOC investigation rarely starts with perfect evidence. Sometimes the analyst has a packet capture. Sometimes there are only flow records. Sometimes the most useful […]
Certifications
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Cisco 200-201: Windows Event Logs for SOC Investigations
Windows produces enormous amounts of event data. A SOC analyst’s job is not to memorize every event ID. It is to recognize which events help […]
Cisco 200-201: Linux Logs for SOC Investigations
Linux does not give a SOC analyst one universal security log with identical paths on every distribution. Modern systems may use the systemd journal, traditional […]
Cisco 200-201: How to Spot DNS Tunneling in SOC Traffic
DNS is necessary for normal network operation, which makes it attractive to attackers. A host that is allowed to resolve names may also be able […]
Cisco 200-201: X.509 Certificates and TLS Key Exchange
TLS investigations become confusing when certificates, cipher suites, encryption algorithms, signatures, and key exchange are treated as one thing. They are related parts of a […]
Cisco 350-401: SD-Access Underlay and Overlay
Cisco SD-Access separates the network into two related systems: an IP underlay that provides basic reachability between fabric devices, and an overlay that carries endpoint […]
Cisco 350-401: Using Catalyst Center Assurance for Troubleshooting
Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance turns telemetry from the network into health scores, issues, events, and troubleshooting workflows. The value is not that it creates one […]
Cisco 350-401: EEM Applets for Local Network Automation
Cisco Embedded Event Manager, or EEM, gives an IOS XE device the ability to react locally when a defined event occurs. Instead of waiting for […]
Cisco 350-401: PIM Sparse Mode, SSM, and IGMP
IP multicast is designed for one-to-many delivery without forcing the sender to transmit a separate copy of the same stream to every receiver. That efficiency […]
Cisco 350-401: SPAN, RSPAN, and ERSPAN for Packet Mirroring
When interface counters and logs are not enough, packet analysis can show exactly what crossed a network device. Cisco SPAN technologies copy selected traffic to […]
Cisco 300-415: How OMP, TLOCs, and BFD Work in Cisco SD-WAN
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN separates route distribution from transport health. Overlay Management Protocol, or OMP, distributes reachability and policy information. Transport Locations, or TLOCs, identify the […]
Cisco 300-415: SD-WAN Control Policy vs Data Policy
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN centralizes policy, but not every policy changes the same part of the network. A centralized control policy changes routing information and topology […]
Cisco 300-415: Application-Aware Routing in Cisco SD-WAN
Traditional routing can choose a path that is reachable but poor for the application using it. A voice call can traverse a tunnel with high […]
Cisco 300-415: SD-WAN Segmentation and Route Leaking
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN uses VPN identifiers to separate transport, management, and service-side routing. The word “VPN” can be confusing here because these are not simply […]
Cisco 300-415: QoS and Adaptive Shaping in Cisco SD-WAN
Quality of Service in Catalyst SD-WAN is not one feature. It is a set of mechanisms that classify traffic, mark it, place it into queues, […]