  Maintaining security and privacy in real-world enterprise networks is
becoming more and more challenging. Cyber actors are increasingly employing
previously unreported and state-of-the-art techniques to break into corporate
networks. To develop novel and effective methods to thwart these sophisticated
cyberattacks, we need datasets that reflect real-world enterprise scenarios to
a high degree of accuracy. However, precious few such datasets are publicly
available. Researchers still predominantly use the decade-old KDD datasets,
however, studies showed that these datasets do not adequately reflect modern
attacks like Advanced Persistent Threats(APT). In this work, we analyze the
usefulness of the recently introduced DARPA Operationally Transparent Cyber
(OpTC) dataset in this regard. We describe the content of the dataset in detail
and present a qualitative analysis. We show that the OpTC dataset is an
excellent candidate for advanced cyber threat detection research while also
highlighting its limitations. Additionally, we propose several research
directions where this dataset can be useful.
