Cisco Talos is Cisco’s threat intelligence organization, delivering real-time threat intelligence and malware analytics to help organizations detect and prevent threats before they impact the network. According to the SCAZT guide, Talos provides comprehensive coverage of threat data including signatures, indicators of compromise, and context-driven analytics. This intelligence feeds into Cisco security platforms such as Cisco SecureX and Cisco Secure Endpoint to enhance detection, investigation, and response capabilities. Talos is explicitly referenced in the Threat Response section as the primary source of threat intelligence and malware analytics that supports cloud and endpoint security frameworks.

The alert identifies known malicious communication from a host with Conduit software installed. Conduit is flagged as spyware/malware by Cisco Secure Analytics.

A: Alerting the incident response team is standard procedure when high-priority threats are confirmed.

E: Quarantining the host via endpoint isolation (e.g., Secure Endpoint or network-based access control) is a critical action to prevent lateral movement.

Blocking the IP alone (B) does not stop internal damage. Shutting down the host (D) prematurely removes forensic evidence. Uninstalling the software (C) should occur later during recovery after analysis.

In IKEv1 policy configuration for Cisco ASA, two key commands are required to define the encryption and hashing algorithms:

A: encryption aes-256 defines the encryption method for the IKE SA.

E: hash sha-256 ensures SHA-256 is used as the integrity mechanism during IKE phase 1.

According to Cisco documentation and SCAZT (Section 1: Cloud Security Architecture, Pages 19–22), these two components are essential to negotiating a secure VPN tunnel. The provided config uses group 1 (modp768), which is weak by today’s standards and could also lead to negotiation failure. However, from the available options, encryption and hash are the two required for tunnel success.

The screenshot from Cisco ISE shows a configuration of a “File Condition” posture check that verifies the existence and version of the “Srv.sys” file in the System32 directory. This is a known method to validate if a Windows device has received a critical security patch (in this case, one related to protection against the WannaCry vulnerability, MS17-010). Cisco ISE does not rely solely on a patch management system for this type of validation but can use specific file version and path checks. Therefore, the correct posture condition is File Condition.

According to the SCAZT documentation, web application firewalls (WAFs) designed to protect against zero-day Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks leverage adaptive and behavioral-based algorithms. These algorithms dynamically analyze traffic patterns, baseline normal behavior, and detect anomalies that could indicate novel or zero-day attacks. Unlike signature-based detection, adaptive and behavioral methods adjust in real-time to emerging threats, learning from ongoing traffic without relying on pre-defined rules. This proactive approach enables rapid detection and mitigation of unknown DDoS vectors, critical for cloud and network security where threats evolve constantly.

Based on the Cisco Tetration segmentation policy and the requirement to allow only web server communication (HTTP/HTTPS):

Rule 1 allows HTTP (port 80) — required

Rule 2 allows HTTPS (port 443) — required

Rule 3 allows SSH — not needed for web communication

Rule 4 allows UDP port 68 (DHCP) — not relevant to application-layer web server traffic

Therefore, Rules 3 and 4 are unnecessary and should be deleted for policy optimization, which aligns with zero-trust and least-privilege access design as outlined in SCAZT Section 4 (Application and Data Security, Pages 86–90).