Splunk Fundamentals 1 Practice Exam

What does the stats command do in the search: index=security sourcetype=linux_secure | stats count(vendor_action) as ActionEvents, count as TotalEvents?

1. Counts the number of events that contain a vendor action field and the total events.

2. Counts the unique number of vendor actions and the total events.

3. Counts the average number of vendor actions and total events.

4. Counts the events by vendor action type and shows percentages.

The correct answer is: Counts the number of events that contain a vendor action field and the total events.

The chosen answer accurately reflects the functionality of the stats command in the specified search. In this context, the stats command aggregates data based on the criteria provided. Specifically, the search counts the number of occurrences of the field 'vendor_action' and also provides a total count of all events returned by the search. The first part, count(vendor_action) as ActionEvents, calculates how many events contain the 'vendor_action' field, giving insights into how many times vendor actions occurred. The second part, count as TotalEvents, gives the count of all the events in the specified index and sourcetype, offering a comprehensive view of the total activity. This command is useful for quickly understanding the volume of specific actions in the security-related logs while simultaneously showing the overall number of events, which can inform security analysts about the prevalence of vendor actions relative to total log activity.