Digital Forensic Certification Practice Exam

What would the sc-status field be used to identify in IIS logs?

1. Status codes for requests

2. IP addresses of clients

3. Content types requested

4. User agents

The correct answer is: Status codes for requests

The sc-status field in IIS (Internet Information Services) logs is specifically designed to record the status codes that the server returns in response to client requests. These status codes indicate the outcome of HTTP requests, such as whether they were successful (like a 200 status code for OK), resulted in a redirection (like a 301 or 302), encountered an error (like a 404 for Not Found or a 500 for Server Error), among others. Identifying these status codes is vital for analyzing server performance, monitoring the health of a website, and troubleshooting issues. For instance, a high number of 404 status codes could indicate that users are trying to access pages that no longer exist, prompting a review of site links and structures. In contrast, other fields that might appear in IIS logs serve different purposes, such as logging IP addresses, content types, or user agent strings, but none of those functions are associated with the sc-status field.