Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate is a well-known certification that allows candidates to validate their skills in cybersecurity operations. If you are rooting for a career in the cybersecurity field, obtaining this certificate is a must for you. It will provide you with limitless career opportunities within the IT sector and will help to build a solid knowledge base for further development.

Certification Overview

The Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate certification has no formal prerequisites. However, it is recommended that the candidate should have a proper understanding of the exam domains in order to get success in the test. The candidates who are passionate about cybersecurity normally apply for this certification as it verifies their knowledge of security and security-related concepts.

The candidates who want to earn this prestigious certification only have to pass 200-201 exam. It has a duration of 120 minutes and covers the major security concepts like security monitoring, host-based analysis, security policies, network intrusion analysis, and procedures. The test comes in English only and to register for it, the candidates have to pay $300 as an exam fee plus tax. When it comes to the delivery format, you can take it online or in-person in the testing center.

What Are the Domains Covered by Cisco 200-201 Certification Exam?

The exam domains are well-defined for every Cisco certification exam and candidates have to start their preparation for the needed test by learning the topics mentioned in the official syllabus. Once the concepts are clear, it is easier for a candidate to pass the test. For 200-201 exam, the domains and major topics are as follows:

• Security Monitoring (25%)

  The first tested domain discusses security monitoring. It includes the topics like comparing attack surface and vulnerability, identifying types of data provided by technologies like application visibility and control, NetFlow, TCP dump, Traditional stateful firewall, Web content filtering, and email content filtering. Moreover, it also describes the impact of security technologies on data visibility. The candidate's knowledge about the uses of data types in security monitoring, defining web application attacks, explaining network attacks, and describing endpoint-based attacks will be tested in the exam. Next, the impact of certificates on security and description of evasion and obfuscation techniques are also included in this domain.

• Security Concepts (20%)

  The second tested area defines security concepts. It involves describing the CIA triad, security terms, and comparing security deployments. You will come across the concepts of comparing rule-based detection vs behavioral detection and interpreting the 5-tuple approach to isolate a compromised host in grouped set of logs. The candidate’s knowledge about identifying challenges of data visibility and potential data loss will also be measured in this topic area. It also describes the terms that are defined in CVSS: user interaction, scope, attack vector, attack complexity, and privileges required.

• Host-based Analysis (20%)

  The third tested section talks about the host-based analysis. The candidate needs to learn about the functionality of endpoint technologies to do security monitoring. This domain also involves the technologies like antimalware and antivirus, host-based intrusion detection, application-level listing/ block listing, systems-based sandboxing, and a host-based firewall. Furthermore, it also identifies the components of an operating system, describes the role of attribution in an investigation. This domain also covers comparing tampered and untampered disk images, interpreting output reports of a malware analysis tool, interpreting the operating system, and command-line logs or application to identify any event. Next, it also consists of information about the type of evidence used based on the provided logs: corroborative evidence, best evidence, and indirect evidence.

• Network Intrusion Analysis (20%)

  The fourth tested part covers network intrusion analysis. It includes the events to source the technologies that are proxy logs, antivirus, transaction data, IDS/IPS, firewall, and network application control. This domain also caters the sub-topics like comparing deep packet inspection with packet filtering & stateful firewall operation. The candidate’s skills of comparing the characteristics of data obtained from taps or transactional data in the analysis of network traffic are also measured in the exam. Moreover, the candidate should know how to extract files from a TCP stream when provided a PCAP file & Wireshark. It also identifies the key elements of intrusion and interprets the fields in protocol headers related to intrusion analysis. Lastly, it also focuses on interpreting common artifact elements from an event and the basic regular expressions. For identifying an alert, the elements used are the IP address, client and server port identity, system, process, hashes, and URL/URI.

• Security Policies and Procedures (15%)

  The fifth and the last tested portion of the exam syllabus describes security policies and procedures. It defines all the management concepts like configuration management, asset management, mobile device management, patch management, and vulnerability management. Moreover, it also covers the elements of an incident response plan, mapping elements to follow the steps of analysis based on the NIST.SP800-61. The candidate should know how to identify the elements used for network profiling and server profiling. It also tests your knowledge of the concepts of classifying intrusion events as explained by security models. In addition, it also explores the relationship of SOC metrics to scope analysis.

What Are the Career Opportunities for the Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate?

After passing 200-201 exam, you will be honored with Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate certification, and this accomplishment will make you a recognized professional. With this certificate, you can start working as CyberOps analyst or CyberOps specialist, to name the most popular options. The salary you can get in this field is around $70k annually as stated by Glassdoor. It is a good amount for students who wish to boost their career in security operations. You can get expertise by working with Cisco experts and opt for higher-level certifications. This certification sharpens your basic understanding of security and prepares you for more competitive accreditations in the security field.

Certification Path

After accomplishing the Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate certification, you can go for the CyberOps Professional certificate. It will help you to validate more advanced knowledge and skills, which will ensure you are going to have a better future. The CCNP Security accreditation is also very popular in the IT industry and has a great demand in big It firms. You can get this certification to open a door of limitless opportunities for you.