CDSA
HackTheBox

HTB Certified Defensive Security Analyst

Intermediate Practical SOC/DFIR case exam + report Pass: Report/objective quality based; exact threshold n… $210

CDSA validates practical blue-team skills across SOC triage, threat hunting, and incident response reporting. 2026 prep should prioritize query fluency, investigation timelines, and decision justification.

Official Page
IssuerHackTheBox
FormatPractical SOC/DFIR case exam + report
DurationUp to 7 days (indicative)
Pass ScoreReport/objective quality based; exact threshold n…
Full Syllabus
SOC Triage & Log Analysis 25%
Alert validation, timeline construction, and noise reduction.
Threat Hunting & Detection Engineering 20%
Hypothesis-driven hunts, query logic, and rule tuning.
Incident Response Workflow 20%
Containment, eradication, evidence handling and stakeholder updates.
DFIR Artifact Analysis 20%
Host/network artifacts, persistence traces, and attacker activity reconstruction.
Reporting & Post-Incident Improvement 15%
Actionable incident reports, root-cause and control-improvement roadmap.