ECCouncil Updated 312-39 Exam Questions and Answers by cassandra

Initial containment for suspected data exfiltration by a specific user account should prioritize immediately restricting that account’s ability to access and transfer data. “Access control” is the broad containment category that includes disabling the account, suspending sessions, revoking tokens, removing access to sensitive shares, and applying conditional access blocks. This is the fastest way to stop ongoing data loss while preserving evidence for investigation. “Change passwords regularly” is a general security hygiene practice, not an initial incident containment action, and it may not stop exfiltration quickly if active sessions or tokens remain valid. “Isolate the storage” can be appropriate if a particular repository is being actively exfiltrated, but it can be disruptive to business operations and may not address the actor’s continued access paths across other systems. DCAP is a programmatic capability for monitoring and controlling data access over time; it is valuable, but it is not the immediate first step when the SOC must rapidly stop suspected exfiltration. From a SOC playbook view, the initial action is to reduce attacker/insider access immediately (account restriction), then scope what data was accessed, preserve logs, and coordinate with HR/legal for insider procedures.

An output-driven SIEM deployment builds capability by starting with a narrowly defined, high-value detection outcome and then expanding once success is proven. The primary advantage is that it supports iterative growth into broader and more complex use cases with confidence. Each validated use case forces disciplined work on prerequisites: correct data onboarding, parsing, field normalization, baseline understanding, and tuning to reduce false positives. That foundation enables more advanced scenarios that require richer correlation (for example, linking identity events, network telemetry, endpoint behavior, and application logs) and often cover longer timelines or more complex workflows, such as supply chain disruption detection. Option A is not an advantage; collecting logs from non-critical systems may or may not be required depending on use cases. Option C is unrealistic because response speed depends on staffing and workflows, not only SIEM deployment strategy. Option D implies active prevention, which is not the SIEM’s core role (it can trigger automation, but blocking is not automatic by default). Therefore, the best advantage among the given options is enabling creation and expansion to more complex use cases with wider scope.

DNS blackholing blocks access to known malicious infrastructure by resolving selected domains (or related lookups) to a non-routable or controlled sink address, effectively preventing systems from reaching attacker-controlled destinations. The question specifies blocking malicious sending infrastructure “at the DNS level,” which directly points to DNS blackholing. While firewall IP blacklisting blocks network traffic by destination IP, it is not DNS-level control and can miss cases where infrastructure changes IPs frequently or where domains are the stable pivot. URL blacklisting on proxies is a web control and may not cover non-web protocols used by malware or email infrastructure. SMTP filtering focuses on email transport controls at the mail server/gateway level and is effective for blocking inbound spam, but it is not DNS-level blocking. In SOC eradication, DNS-level controls are often used as a fast, scalable mitigation because many malicious workflows depend on name resolution (phishing landing pages, malware C2, payload hosting). DNS blackholing can also provide detection value by logging attempted lookups to known-bad domains, helping scope affected hosts and validate whether users or systems are still attempting to contact attacker infrastructure.

A Hybrid Attack is a type of cyber attack that combines elements of a dictionary attack with a brute force attack. It involves taking words from a dictionary (which could be a list of common passwords or related words) and augmenting them with numbers and symbols to generate potential passwords. This method increases the chances of cracking a password by including the common variations that users often add to their passwords to meet complexity requirements.