Paloalto Networks Updated XDR-Analyst Exam Questions and Answers by jibreel

The “assigned to” field value of a new incident that was just reported to Cortex is “Unassigned”. This means that the incident has not been assigned to any analyst or group yet, and it is waiting for someone to take ownership of it. The “assigned to” field is one of the default fields that are displayed in the incident layout, and it can be used to filter and sort incidents in the incident list. The “assigned to” field can be changed manually by an analyst, or automatically by a playbook or a rule12.

Let’s briefly discuss the other options to provide a comprehensive explanation:

A. Pending: This is not the correct answer. Pending is not a valid value for the “assigned to” field. Pending is a possible value for the “status” field, which indicates the current state of the incident. The status field can have values such as “New”, “Active”, “Done”, “Closed”, or "Pending"3.

B. It is blank: This is not the correct answer. The “assigned to” field is never blank for any incident. It always has a default value of “Unassigned” for new incidents, unless a playbook or a rule assigns it to a specific analyst or group12.

D. New: This is not the correct answer. New is not a valid value for the “assigned to” field. New is a possible value for the “status” field, which indicates the current state of the incident. The status field can have values such as “New”, “Active”, “Done”, “Closed”, or "Pending"3.

In conclusion, the “assigned to” field value of a new incident that was just reported to Cortex is “Unassigned”. This field can be used to manage the ownership and responsibility of incidents, and it can be changed manually or automatically.

 To ingest external logs from various vendors, you need a Cortex XDR Pro per TB license. This license allows you to collect and analyze logs from Palo Alto Networks and third-party sources, such as firewalls, proxies, endpoints, cloud services, and more. You can use the Log Forwarding app to forward logs from the Logging Service to an external syslog receiver. The Cortex XDR Pro per Endpoint license only supports logs from Cortex XDR agents installed on endpoints. The Cortex XDR Vendor Agnostic Pro and Cortex XDR Cloud per Host licenses do not exist. References:

Features by Cortex XDR License Type

Log Forwarding App for Cortex XDR Analytics

SaaS Log Collection

 Cortex XDR agent for Windows prevents ransomware attacks from compromising the file system by utilizing decoy files. Decoy files are randomly generated files that are placed in strategic locations on the endpoint, such as the user’s desktop, documents, and pictures folders. These files are designed to look like valuable data that ransomware would target for encryption. When Cortex XDR agent detects that a process is attempting to access or modify a decoy file, it immediately blocks the process and alerts the administrator. This way, Cortex XDR agent can stop ransomware attacks before they can cause any damage to the real files on the endpoint. References:

Anti-Ransomware Protection

PCDRA Study Guide

 The output shows the top 10 hosts with the most malware in the last 30 days, based on the Cortex XDR data. The output is sorted by the number of incidents, with the host with the most incidents at the top. The output also shows the number of alerts, the number of endpoints, and the percentage of endpoints for each host. The output is generated by using the ACC (Application Command Center) feature of Cortex XDR, which provides a graphical representation of the network activity and threat landscape. The ACC allows you to view and analyze various widgets, such as the Top 10 hosts with the most malware, the Top 10 applications by bandwidth, the Top 10 threats by count, and more .