Question

Difficulty: MediumThreat Intelligence Sources and Research

A cybersecurity consultant is designing an automated threat intelligence enrichment pipeline for an enterprise security team. The architecture requires ingesting open-source, standardized vulnerability data alongside automated, machine-readable threat indicator feeds from external partners over HTTPS. Which of the following sources or protocols should the consultant integrate into the pipeline to achieve these specific goals? (Select TWO.)

  1. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) feeds to ingest standardized vulnerability scoring and CVE metadataAnswer
  2. TAXII protocol servers to handle automated real-time transport of structured threat indicators over HTTPSAnswer
  3. C
    Custom web scrapers targeting unindexed dark web marketplaces for zero-day exploit pricing
  4. D
    Quarterly executive strategic intelligence reports summarizing high-level threat actor motivations
  5. E
    Internal honeypot network sensors configured to capture localized adversary lateral movement

Answer

The correct selections are the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) feeds and TAXII protocol servers.
The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) provides publicly available, standardized vulnerability information (such as CVE details and CVSS ratings) that can be ingested into automated systems. TAXII (Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information) is the standardized application protocol used to transport structured cyber threat intelligence (such as STIX formatted feeds) automatically over HTTPS.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the requirement for open-source standardized vulnerability data.
The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is the standard repository providing open-source vulnerability data, CVE entries, and CVSS scores.
NVD provides public, machine-readable datasets ideal for automated risk scoring.
2
Identify the protocol required for automated, machine-readable threat intelligence transport over HTTPS.
TAXII (Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information) defines the transit protocol for sharing structured cyber threat intelligence (STIX) over HTTPS.
TAXII enables secure machine-to-machine exchange of threat indicators between platforms.

Key Concept

Threat Intelligence Sources and Transportation Protocols
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