SPLK-1004

The Splunk SPLK-1004 exam, focusing on Splunk Enterprise Security, tests your knowledge and skills in using Splunk to detect and respond to security threats. The main points covered generally fall under these categories:

• Understanding Threat Detection in Splunk: This is a core component. You should know how to use Splunk to analyze security logs, identify suspicious activities, and correlate events to detect threats. This involves:

  • Understanding different security data sources: Logs from firewalls, IDS/IPS, SIEMs, endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems, etc. Knowing what kind of data each source provides is crucial.
  • Using Splunk's search processing language (SPL): You'll need proficiency in writing effective SPL queries to analyze security data. This includes using various commands for filtering, statistical analysis, and data manipulation.
  • Identifying and interpreting security events: Being able to distinguish between normal and suspicious activity based on log data.
  • Using pre-built security content: Splunk offers pre-built security content (rules, dashboards, reports) that significantly aid threat detection. Knowing how to use and customize this content is important.
  • Creating and using custom security content: For more advanced scenarios, you might need to create your own searches, dashboards, and reports.

• Security Investigation and Response: Once a threat is detected, you need to investigate it and respond appropriately. This covers:

  • Triaging alerts: Prioritizing alerts based on severity and potential impact.
  • Investigating alerts: Using Splunk to gather more details about a specific alert, potentially involving deep dives into raw log data.
  • Performing root cause analysis: Determining the cause of a security incident to prevent future occurrences.
  • Responding to incidents: This could involve blocking malicious IPs, isolating infected systems, or other remediation actions (though the exam likely focuses on the investigation aspect more than the direct remediation).

• Configuration and Management of Splunk Enterprise Security (SES): While not as heavily weighted as threat detection and investigation, a basic understanding of SES configuration is required. This might include:

  • Understanding the architecture of Splunk Enterprise Security: Knowing how different components (like the indexers, search heads, etc.) work together.
  • Basic configuration of security settings: Understanding how to configure things like data inputs and data retention policies. (Again, deep configuration is usually not tested at this level).

• Understanding of Security Concepts: The exam implicitly tests your understanding of common security concepts, such as:

  • Different types of cyber threats: Malware, phishing, denial-of-service attacks, etc.
  • Common security protocols: Understanding these helps interpret log data effectively.
  • Security best practices: The exam might assess your ability to apply security principles in the context of Splunk.

In summary, the SPLK-1004 exam focuses on applying Splunk to real-world security scenarios. The emphasis is on using SPL for efficient data analysis, interpreting security logs, and investigating potential security threats. Make sure you have hands-on experience using Splunk Enterprise Security to fully grasp these topics.