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312-85 · domain

Data Analysis

This domain covers turning raw threat data into defensible conclusions: indicator enrichment and pivoting, link analysis across domains, hashes and C2 IPs, visualizing TTPs, and structured analytic techniques like Analysis of Competing Hypotheses. Questions present analyst scenarios and ask you to choose the correct analytic method, tool, or bias-mitigation step.

45 questions10 easy21 medium14 hard

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What this domain covers

What to know about Data Analysis

Be able to pivot from an indicator to related infrastructure, choose a visualization that shows TTPs rather than raw IOCs, and run ACH by testing evidence against competing hypotheses. The key is letting evidence disconfirm hypotheses instead of confirming your first instinct.

Pivoting indicators (IPs, domains, file hashes) to correlate campaigns and infrastructure

Building link analysis charts from domain registrations, malware hashes, and C2 IPs

Selecting visualization methods that map threat actor TTPs, such as attack matrices

Applying Analysis of Competing Hypotheses to evaluate evidence and reduce cognitive bias

Watch out for

Common Data Analysis exam traps

  • ▸Treating shared indicators as proof of a single actor, ignoring shared hosting, sinkholes, or false-flag reuse
  • ▸Confusing tactical IOCs with TTP-level analysis, so visualizations show atomic indicators instead of behaviors
  • ▸Confirming the first hypothesis that fits the data rather than seeking disconfirming evidence, defeating ACH's purpose

Question index

All Data Analysis questions (45)

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1

When utilizing the MITRE ATT&CK framework for data analysis, you identify that an actor is using 'DLL Side-Loading'. Which analytical technique should you apply to map this observation to the ATT&CK matrix?

Medium
2

Which TWO of the following are primary goals of conducting a threat modeling exercise on a new software application?

Medium
3

You are reviewing a large NetFlow data set and observe an internal workstation sending 40-byte UDP packets to a single external IP address every 60 seconds for several days, with almost no return traffic. Which analytic interpretation is most appropriate?

Hard
4

You are analyzing an intrusion set and need to assess how consistently a specific adversary group has targeted your industry over the past 18 months. You have a feed of 4,200 indicators, but 3,100 of them are domain names that resolve to shared CDN infrastructure used by thousands of legitimate sites. Which structured analytic technique is MOST appropriate to reduce this noise before you draw conclusions about targeting patterns?

Medium
5

In threat modeling, what does the 'D' in DREAD risk assessment stand for?

Easy
6

You are an analyst at a financial services firm. Your team has collected a large set of indicators of compromise (IOCs) from an open-source feed. Before integrating them into your SIEM for automated blocking, you need to perform data enrichment. Which of the following best describes the primary goal of enriching these IOCs with contextual data?

Medium
7

When performing statistical analysis on threat actor TTP frequency, you identify a set of outliers that do not fit the normal distribution of observed incident timestamps. Which statistical measure should you apply to determine if these outliers are significant enough to warrant a change in threat modeling?

Medium
8

You are correlating host and network telemetry after an intrusion and need to establish which account was used to move laterally between servers. Which two data sources are most directly useful for this determination? (Choose two.)

Hard
9

When analyzing network traffic for C2 communication, which THREE anomalies are common indicators of malicious activity?

Hard
10

You are analyzing a large set of security events to identify patterns of malicious activity. You decide to use a pivot table to summarize the data by source IP and event type. Which of the following is the primary benefit of using pivot tables in threat data analysis?

Medium
11

You are reviewing a threat intelligence report that includes an indicator of compromise (IoC) in the form of a file hash. The report states that the hash is 'SHA-256: 8f14e45fceea167a5a36dedd4bea2543...'. What is the primary purpose of including this hash in the report?

Easy
12

In the context of data analysis for CTI, what is the primary purpose of normalizing disparate log data from multiple SIEM sources?

Easy
13

Which TWO methods are effective for visualizing threat actor TTPs within a CTI report?

Medium
14

A junior analyst presents a chart showing that malware detections in your environment dropped 40 percent after a new endpoint agent was deployed. You suspect the chart is misleading because the agent only covers Windows servers, while the previous agent covered servers and workstations. Which analytic step should you take FIRST to validate whether the apparent drop is real?

Hard
15

An analyst is enriching indicators of compromise before publishing them for detection engineering. Which action best reflects sound intelligence preparation for an IP address indicator?

Medium
16

During a threat intelligence analysis, you are examining a large dataset of network flow records. You notice a significant number of outbound connections from internal hosts to a known malicious IP address on port 443, but the connections are short-lived and occur at regular intervals. Which of the following best describes the adversary behavior you are observing?

Hard
17

Which of the following is a primary benefit of using a 'Diamond Model' of intrusion analysis in your threat report?

Easy
18

A threat intelligence analyst is preparing to analyze a large set of intrusion artifacts collected from multiple sensors. She wants to apply structured analysis techniques to reduce bias and improve the defensibility of her conclusions. Which two techniques are most appropriate for this goal? (Choose two.)

Medium
19

You are reviewing your organization's threat modeling process. Which TWO of the following are considered essential components to include when documenting a threat model?

Medium
20

Which THREE data sources are typically analyzed when investigating an insider threat according to security behavior analytics?

Hard
21

In an ACH matrix, you have assigned values to the diagnostic evidence. You observe that a specific hypothesis has the lowest score. What does this indicate about the hypothesis?

Hard
22

You are a threat intelligence analyst at a healthcare organization. Your team is developing a threat model for a new telemedicine platform. You need to identify potential threat actors and their capabilities. Which two of the following factors are most critical to consider when assessing threat actor intent and capability? (Choose two.)

Medium
23

What does a high 'CVSS' score indicate in the context of vulnerability data analysis?

Easy
24

You are analyzing a Linux server that is suspected of being compromised. You observe a process named 'kworker' that is consuming high CPU, but when you check the parent process ID (PPID), it is 1 (init). Which of the following is the most likely explanation for this observation?

Medium
25

A SOC analyst is building a hypothesis set to explain a suspected data exfiltration event. She creates five mutually exclusive hypotheses and then scores each piece of evidence for consistency with every hypothesis. After scoring, she notices that one hypothesis has the highest total consistency score, but the evidence is sparse and several items are ambiguous. What should she do before finalizing her assessment?

Medium
26

While conducting a threat modeling exercise using STRIDE, you are analyzing a cloud-based API gateway. You notice that authentication tokens are being logged in plain text in the debugging logs. Which threat category in STRIDE is most specifically violated here?

Hard
27

When conducting a 'Sensitivity Analysis' on your threat model, what are you attempting to determine?

Hard
28

A threat intelligence analyst is investigating a malware sample that communicates with a command-and-control (C2) server using a custom protocol over TCP port 443. The traffic is encrypted and does not match typical TLS patterns. The analyst observes that the malware sends a small beacon every 60 seconds, and the server responds with a similarly sized packet. Which analysis approach would BEST help the analyst understand the C2 protocol and extract potential indicators?

Hard
29

You are reviewing a threat intelligence report that includes a list of indicators. You notice that one indicator is an IP address with a low confidence score. According to best practices, what should you do before using this indicator for detection?

Easy
30

A threat intelligence analyst is examining a malware sample that uses a technique to hide its presence by injecting code into a legitimate process. The analyst observes that the malware creates a new process in a suspended state, unmaps its memory, and replaces it with malicious code. Which technique is being used?

Easy
31

You are analyzing a malware sample that communicates with a command-and-control (C2) server. The network traffic shows periodic HTTP GET requests to a domain that resolves to multiple IP addresses, and the User-Agent string is identical across all requests. Which of the following analytical techniques would best help you identify the infrastructure and potential attribution of the threat actor?

Hard
32

A threat intelligence analyst is tasked with enriching indicators of compromise (IOCs) from a recent malware campaign. The analyst has a list of file hashes and wants to gather additional context to support incident response. Which TWO of the following actions would BEST provide actionable intelligence about the malware's capabilities and infrastructure? (Choose two.)

Medium
33

During a malware analysis engagement, you receive a sample whose import table references the Windows API functions VirtualAllocEx, WriteProcessMemory, and CreateRemoteThread. Which analytical conclusion is best supported by this evidence?

Medium
34

An analyst is reviewing a threat intelligence report that includes a list of IP addresses, domain names, and file hashes associated with a recent campaign. The report states that these indicators were observed on multiple victim networks over the past month. What is the most appropriate first step before using these indicators in detection rules?

Easy
35

A threat intelligence team is correlating indicators from multiple feeds. They observe that a set of domain names resolves to fast-flux IP addresses, the domains were registered within the last 48 hours, and the same SSL certificate serial number appears across several unrelated domains. Which analytic conclusion is best supported by this evidence?

Hard
36

You are building a link analysis chart to map an intrusion set's operational infrastructure. You have collected domain registrations, malware sample hashes, and command-and-control IP addresses, but you need to select additional data elements that will produce meaningful links rather than coincidental ones. (Choose two.)

Medium
37

You are reviewing network traffic logs for potential C2 (Command and Control) beaconing. You decide to use a rolling average to smooth out the data. Why is this statistical technique useful in this scenario?

Medium
38

A threat intelligence analyst is examining a malware sample and notices that the executable's import table contains only two functions from kernel32.dll: LoadLibraryA and GetProcAddress. The analyst suspects the sample is designed to evade static analysis. Which technique is MOST likely being used?

Medium
39

When conducting an Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), which TWO actions help mitigate cognitive bias in your conclusions?

Hard
40

A junior analyst asks how to choose between competing hypotheses about an intrusion. Which approach best reflects structured analytic technique?

Easy
41

You are analyzing an adversary's 'Infrastructure'. You note that they rotate IP addresses every 24 hours. Which analysis technique is most effective for mapping this persistent behavior?

Medium
42

Which THREE factors should be considered when evaluating the reliability of threat intelligence data used in your analysis?

Medium
43

You are conducting a threat intelligence analysis on a recent cyber espionage campaign. You have collected various data points and need to assess the credibility of the intelligence. Which two of the following factors are most critical in evaluating the reliability of the threat data? (Choose two.)

Hard
44

A threat intelligence analyst is examining a malware sample and observes that the binary contains a hardcoded list of domain names that are contacted in a fixed order, with a fallback to a DGA-generated domain if the first three fail. The analyst wants to characterize the command-and-control resilience of this malware. Which statement best describes the resilience of this C2 approach?

Medium
45

Which of the following is a common pitfall when performing 'Trend Analysis' on threat data?

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Data Analysis domain cover on the 312-85 exam?
Be able to pivot from an indicator to related infrastructure, choose a visualization that shows TTPs rather than raw IOCs, and run ACH by testing evidence against competing hypotheses. The key is letting evidence disconfirm hypotheses instead of confirming your first instinct.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 45 Data Analysis questions in the 312-85 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Data Analysis questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
Certified Threat Intelligence Analyst (312-85) Data Analysis Practice Questions