Splunk Core Certified Power User

When Splunk ingests hundreds of thousands of events from forwarders, network devices, and user inputs, SOC teams that rely on basic searches spend too long finding what matters. This course moves analysts from running searches to building the shared knowledge objects (fields, tags, event types, macros, workflow actions, and data models) that make Splunk data manageable for the whole team.

Role fit: Best for SOC analysts, SIEM administrators, and IT Practitioners who already search in Splunk daily. Team Leads can assign it to one or two people who will standardize searches for the rest of the SOC. Learners who skipped Splunk Core Certified User can still start here, though the earlier course is the natural foundation.

Time investment: About 6.6 hours across eight skills of roughly 45–54 minutes each, so most learners can finish in two to three weeks alongside regular work.

Risk and change management: The instructor stresses aligning Splunk practices with SOPs and policies set by the CIO or CISO. Power user work also means more object ownership and sharing permissions. For example, custom event types must be shared to all apps with read access for everyone to work with the CIM. Plan for who owns and reviews shared objects before rollout.

How CBT Nuggets supports it: Every skill runs in a hands-on Splunk lab environment, with guided exercises and challenges such as investigating 500 and 503 errors and tagging a compromised host, so analysts practice on realistic data before they touch production.

SOC and IT operations teams often collect hundreds of thousands of events from forwarders, network devices, and user inputs, then struggle to turn that volume into answers. This course trains your team to make Splunk data manageable for everyone working in the SOC. They practice in hands-on lab scenarios built around real defensive work.

• Faster troubleshooting of web failures: Analysts use search and where to isolate HTTP 500 and 503 status codes. These errors are unusual and can signal a hijacked service or man-in-the-middle activity, so they need fast investigation.
• Clear incident reconstruction: Your team uses transactions and event grouping to follow one flow of activity, such as actions by the root user. They then turn it into a report that shows what happened, on which system, and for how long.
• Consistent flagging of known threats: With tags and event types, the SOC can flag all activity tied to a known compromised host, no matter which source type logged it. Workflow actions such as CVE research lookups let analysts move from a suspicious event to the next step in one click.
• Normalized data that works across tools: Team members learn to map proprietary sources to the Common Information Model (CIM) with event types and tags. They also learn to set the correct sharing permissions and to validate data models with from, datamodel, and tstats. This matters because CIM does not automatically understand every data source just because the add-on is installed.

The result for IT Directors is shared searches, macros, and knowledge objects that match your organization's SOPs and policies. This reduces one-off queries and helps make Splunk a more reliable, detail-oriented defense tool.

Knowledge

• How Power User permissions expand object ownership, saved searches, alerts, and dashboard capabilities, and why corporate policy should guide how those objects are built
• When to use the search and where commands to filter results, such as isolating HTTP 500 and 503 status codes during troubleshooting
• How transactions differ from grouping events with commands like stats, and when each fits a correlation task
• How tags and event types classify data, including when a tag is the better choice for flagging a known compromised host across source types
• How data models are structured as parent and child datasets, and the differences between the from, datamodel, and tstats commands
• Why the Common Information Model (CIM) does not automatically understand proprietary data sources, and how event types and tags map that data to CIM

Ability

• Build chart-based searches that turn high-volume ingested data into readable output the team can act on
• Correlate related events into transactions and present them as reports that show the host, the timing, and the duration of activity
• Create, manage, and edit fields, tags, and event types, including changing search strings, color, and priority
• Build macros and GET and POST workflow actions that pass field values, such as a CVE ID, to external research or response tools
• Query data models with SPL using from, datamodel, and tstats, including chaining to child datasets like web errors
• Normalize and validate data for CIM by setting the permissions on custom event types so they work across apps