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200-201 A SOC analyst at a medium-sized enterprise Practice Question
You are a SOC analyst at a medium-sized enterprise. The company uses a SIEM that collects logs from firewalls, endpoints, and Active Directory. At 2:00 AM, the SIEM generates a high-priority alert: 'Multiple Failed Logins for Administrator Account from Remote IP 198.51.100.20'. The analyst on the night shift reviews the alert and sees that there were 50 failed attempts in 10 minutes, followed by a successful login at 2:12 AM. The successful login originated from the same IP. The account is a domain administrator. The analyst checks the firewall logs and sees that the IP is from a known VPN provider. The analyst also checks the endpoint logs and sees that no unusual activity has occurred after the login. The company has a policy that remote administration is allowed only from a specific jump server with IP 203.0.113.10. The analyst suspects a brute-force attack succeeded. What should the analyst do first?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between containment (disabling the account) and remediation (resetting the password), where candidates mistakenly choose password reset first because they think it solves the problem, but disabling is the correct immediate action to cut off access.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Disable the compromised administrator account immediately
The immediate priority is to contain the breach by disabling the compromised domain administrator account. The successful login from an unauthorized IP (198.51.100.20) after 50 failed attempts indicates a successful brute-force attack, and the account has domain-level privileges. Disabling the account stops any further lateral movement or privilege escalation, which is the first step in incident response containment before any remediation or investigation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Block the IP address 198.51.100.20 on the firewall
Why it's wrong here
Blocking the IP is reactive, but the attacker may have already used that session to move laterally.
- ✓
Disable the compromised administrator account immediately
Why this is correct
Disabling the account stops all access by the attacker and is the fastest containment action.
- ✗
Perform a full network scan of the VPN provider's entire IP range
Why it's wrong here
Scanning the VPN provider's range is inefficient and could be considered aggressive; it does not address the immediate threat.
- ✗
Reset the password of the compromised administrator account
Why it's wrong here
Resetting the password is important, but it does not terminate the current session immediately; disabling the account is more urgent.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 200-201 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 200-201 exam.