312-85 Exam Dumps : Certified Threat Intelligence Analyst (CTIA)

The described activity involves pretending to be a legitimate or authorized person in order to gather sensitive information. This social engineering technique is known as Impersonation.

Impersonation is a form of deception in which the attacker pretends to be someone else — such as an employee, contractor, or service technician — to gain access to restricted information or areas. In this method, the attacker often relies on trust, authority, or familiarity to manipulate others into revealing confidential data.

In the scenario, the analyst obtained information by observing terminals, searching desks, and examining bins while pretending to be a trusted individual. This fits the definition of impersonation rather than other social engineering methods.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

Shoulder surfing: Involves directly observing someone’s screen or keyboard to capture credentials or data, not pretending to be someone else.

Piggybacking: Refers to physically following an authorized person into a restricted area without proper authentication.

Dumpster diving: Involves searching discarded items, such as trash or recycle bins, to find confidential information, without human interaction or pretense.

Conclusion:

The analyst used Impersonation to pose as an authorized person and collect sensitive data.

Final Answer: A. Impersonation

Explanation Reference (Based on CTIA Study Concepts):

From the CTIA study materials under “Social Engineering and Threat Collection Techniques,” impersonation is identified as a key human-based technique for gathering information during reconnaissance.

Threat Grid is a threat intelligence and analysis platform that offers advanced capabilities for automatic data collection, filtering, and analysis. It is designed to help organizations convert raw threat data into meaningful, actionable intelligence. By employing advanced analytics and machine learning, Threat Grid can reduce noise from large data sets, helping to eliminate misrepresentations and enhance the quality of the threat intelligence. This makes it an ideal choice for Tim, who is looking to address the challenges of converting raw data into contextual information and managing the noise from massive data collections.

In the incident response process, the Identification phase is the first active stage where analysts and responders detect and confirm that a security incident has occurred or is in progress.

When an unusual surge in outbound traffic is observed, analysts start investigating alerts, logs, and events to determine whether the activity indicates a genuine security incident. This process includes correlating data, analyzing patterns, and confirming abnormal or malicious behavior. Once confirmed, the situation moves officially from an event to an incident.

Key Objectives of the Identification Phase:

Detect potential security events through monitoring and alerts.

Analyze anomalies to verify if an incident truly exists.

Classify and prioritize the incident based on severity and impact.

Document findings for escalation to containment and eradication stages.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

B. Recovery:This is a later phase where systems are restored to normal operations after an incident has been resolved. It occurs after containment and eradication.

C. Containment:This phase involves isolating affected systems to prevent the spread or escalation of the incident. It happens after identification.

D. Eradication:This phase focuses on removing the root cause of the incident (e.g., deleting malware, closing vulnerabilities) and also occurs after containment.

Conclusion:

The initial stage where the presence of a security incident is recognized and confirmed is the Identification phase.

Final Answer: A. Identification

Explanation Reference (Based on CTIA Study Concepts):

According to the CTIA study materials under the section “Incident Response Integration and Threat Intelligence,” the Identification phase is where organizations detect and verify anomalies, confirming whether a security incident has occurred before proceeding to containment and recovery.