Palo Alto Networks XSIAM Engineer Sample Questions:

1. A security engineer is tasked with integrating a custom-built internal application's security audit logs into XSIAM. The application generates JSON formatted logs directly to a dedicated S3 bucket in AWS. The logs contain critical information like user actions, access attempts, and configuration changes. The requirement is to ingest these logs efficiently and ensure they are properly parsed for XSIAM's analytics and correlation engines, while minimizing custom development within XSIAM. Which XSIAM integration approach is most suitable?

A) Manually download the JSON logs from S3 daily and upload them to XSIAM's Data Lake via the XSIAM UI for batch processing.
B) Use an XSIAM Playbook to periodically query the S3 bucket via the AWS S3 API, then parse the JSON within the playbook and push the data using the XSIAM Event Ingest API.
C) Set up an XSIAM Data Collector on an EC2 instance within the AWS VPC, which pulls logs from the S3 bucket using the AWS SDK, then forwards them to XSIAM's Data Lake. XSIAM's auto-parsing for JSON can be leveraged, or a minimal custom parser defined if needed.
D) Configure an AWS S3 trigger to invoke an AWS Lambda function that pushes the JSON logs to an XSIAM Broker via syslog, then create a custom parser in XSIAM.
E) Configure the S3 bucket to directly send notifications to an SNS topic, which then triggers an HTTPS endpoint on an XSIAM Data Broker to ingest the raw JSON.

2. Consider the following XSIAM correlation rule pseudo-code designed to detect a suspicious 'Golden Ticket' attack attempt, where an attacker might try to use a forged Kerberos ticket:

Based on a new threat intelligence report, a 'Golden Ticket' attack can now be executed without 'mimikatz.exe' and often involves a 'service ticket' request from a newly created user account. How should this XSIAM rule be optimized to align with the updated threat intelligence, while maintaining a low false positive rate?

A) Option C
B) Option B
C) Option D
D) Option A
E) Option E

3. An XSIAM engineer is reviewing an agent installation script for Linux. The script uses an installation token and attempts to assign the agent to a group. The script fails consistently with an 'Authentication Failed' or 'Invalid Token' error, even though the token was copied directly from the XSIAM console. Upon investigation, it's found that the console URL for generating the token includes a region-specific endpoint, but the script uses a generic cloud URL. Which of the following is the most likely cause of the failure, and what should be the immediate corrective action?

A) The agent is attempting to connect to the wrong XSIAM cloud region/instance. The installation command must explicitly include the correct FQDN for the XSIAM cloud instance, which is tied to the tenant's region.
B) The installation token has expired. Regenerate a new token from the XSIAM console and re-run the script.
C) There is a network firewall blocking outbound TCP port 443 to the XSIAM cloud. Open the firewall for the generic cloud URL.
D) The agent group 'Production_Linux' does not exist in the XSIAM console. Create the group and re-run the script.
E) The Linux server's time is out of sync with the XSIAM cloud, causing SSL certificate validation failures. Synchronize the server's NTP.

4. A security analyst is designing an automation workflow in XSIAM to automatically quarantine endpoints exhibiting specific malware behavior identified by XDR. The workflow needs to first enrich the endpoint details from an external CMDB, then check if the endpoint belongs to a critical asset group, and finally, if both conditions are met, initiate a quarantine action via an API call to the endpoint security solution. Which XSIAM automation construct would be most suitable for this conditional logic and external system interaction?

A) Manually triggering a 'Response Action' from the XSIAM incident details page.
B) An XSIAM 'Playbook' leveraging 'Conditional Steps' and 'External API Integrations'.
C) A 'Search Query' in XSIAM's Query Language (XQL) to identify affected endpoints.
D) A custom XSIAM 'Indicator of Compromise (IOC)' definition.
E) A simple XSIAM 'Alert Action' with a pre-defined quarantine function.

5. An organization is deploying XSIAM and needs to onboard logs from a legacy mainframe system running z/OS. This system generates sequential data set logs that are not easily accessible via standard network protocols and lack a native agent for forwarding. The logs are crucial for audit and compliance. What is the most viable and secure method to integrate these logs into XSIAM?

A) Develop a COBOL program on the mainframe to write the sequential data sets to a shared network file system (NFS) mount accessible by an XSIAM broker, ensuring NFS permissions are tightly controlled.
B) Utilize a specialized Mainframe-to-Distributed Systems (M2DS) log forwarding solution from a third-party vendor, which acts as a bridge to convert and transmit mainframe logs.
C) Implement a batch process on the mainframe that periodically offloads the sequential data sets to an SFTP server, from which an XSIAM broker or a custom data collector can retrieve them.
D) Re-engineer the mainframe application to output logs directly to Syslog UDP, despite the significant code changes and potential stability risks.
E) Manually copy the sequential data sets to magnetic tapes, transport the tapes offsite, and then ingest the data into XSIAM via a tape reader at a later time.

Solutions: