Objective 3.3
Cybersecurity Defense AnalystDescribe how Splunk Security Essentials and Splunk Enterprise Security can be used to assess data sources, including common sourcetypes for on-prem and cloud based deployments and how to find content for a given sourcetype
Objective 3.3 sits in Defenses, Data Sources, and SIEM Best Practices, which carries 20% of the Cybersecurity Defense Analyst exam. The questions below are original, written from the official objective title above, and each explanation cites the Splunk page it rests on.
Objective title verbatim from the official objectives. Splunk exam page ↗
A worked example
Shown solved, with the whole explanation open: this is what every question here carries.
An analyst wants to know which sourcetypes are feeding a given CIM data model and which events are missing extractions. Which documented tool does that?
Correct.
Checked against help.splunk.com, August 2026Concept
Assessing a data source means asking whether the model is actually being populated, not whether the add-on is installed. Those two answers differ more often than anyone expects.
Why D
Splunk documents accessing the CIM Validation model in Pivot and splitting rows by source type to see counts of events missing extractions.
Source
Splunk Docs: Use the CIM to validate your data, checked August 2026Top level datasets such as Authentication tell you what is feeding the model. Pivot allows you to validate that you are getting what you expect from your available source types. For best results, split rows by source type and add a column to the table to show counts for how many events in that source type are missing extractions.
Now you: objective 3.3 questions
No account needed. The explanation opens when you answer.
Sample question 1 of 3
An analyst wants the list of fields available in the Authentication data model without opening Pivot. Which command does Splunk document?
Sample question 2 of 3
An analyst finds that a source type contributes events to a model but the dataset is incomplete. Which CIM Validation search does Splunk document for that case?
Sample question 3 of 3
An analyst asks what the Untagged events search in CIM Validation looks for. What does Splunk document?
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Read the sources
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More objectives in Defenses, Data Sources, and SIEM Best Practices
- 3.1 Identify common types of cyber defense systems, analysis tools and the most useful data sources for threat analysis
- 3.2 Describe SIEM best practices and basic operation concepts of Splunk Enterprise Security, including the interaction between CIM, Data Models and acceleration, Asset and Identity frameworks, and common CIM fields that may be used in investigations