Ace Your CISA Isaca Certification Exam

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that outlines how an organization will continue its critical functions in the event of a disruption or disaster. A BCP should include the following elements1:

Business impact analysis: This is the process of identifying and prioritizing the key business processes and assets that are essential for the organization’s survival and recovery.

Risk assessment: This is the process of identifying and evaluating the potential threats and vulnerabilities that could affect the organization’s business continuity.

Recovery strategies: These are the actions and procedures that the organization will implement to restore its normal operations as quickly and effectively as possible after a disruption or disaster.

Recovery objectives: These are the metrics that define the acceptable level of recovery for the organization’s business processes and assets. The two main recovery objectives are:

Recovery point objective (RPO): This is the maximum amount of data loss that the organization can tolerate in terms of time. For example, an RPO of one hour means that the organization can afford to lose up to one hour’s worth of data after a disruption or disaster.

Recovery time objective (RTO): This is the maximum amount of time that the organization can tolerate to restore its normal operations after a disruption or disaster. For example, an RTO of four hours means that the organization must resume its normal operations within four hours after a disruption or disaster.

Testing and validation: This is the process of verifying and evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the BCP and its components. Testing and validation can include various methods, such as:

Tabletop exercises: These are discussion-based sessions where team members meet in an informal setting to review and discuss their roles and responsibilities during a disruption or disaster scenario. A facilitator guides participants through a discussion of one or more scenarios2.

Simulation exercises: These are more realistic and interactive sessions where team members perform their roles and responsibilities during a simulated disruption or disaster scenario. A facilitator controls and monitors the simulation and injects events and challenges3.

Full-scale exercises: These are the most complex and realistic sessions where team members perform their roles and responsibilities during a real-life disruption or disaster scenario. A facilitator coordinates and evaluates the exercise with external stakeholders, such as emergency services, media, or customers4.

As an IS auditor, your greatest concern when reviewing the organization’s BCP would be A. The recovery plan does not contain the process and application dependencies.

 The most effective control over visitor access to highly secured areas is to require visitors to be escorted by authorized personnel. This control ensures that visitors are supervised at all times and do not enter any restricted or sensitive areas without permission. It also allows authorized personnel to verify the identity, purpose, and clearance of the visitors, and to monitor their behavior and activities. Escorting visitors also reduces the risk of tailgating, piggybacking, or unauthorized duplication of access credentials.

Requiring visitors to use biometric authentication, monitoring visitors online by security cameras, and requiring visitors to enter through dead-man doors are all examples of technical controls that can enhance visitor access control, but they are not as effective as escorting visitors. Biometric authentication can provide a high level of identity verification, but it does not prevent visitors from accessing unauthorized areas or compromising security in other ways. Security cameras can provide a record of visitor movements and actions, but they may not deter or detect security breaches in real time. Dead-man doors can prevent unauthorized entry by requiring two-factor authentication, but they do not ensure that visitors are accompanied by authorized personnel.

References:

ISC Best Practices for Facility Access Control1

Visitor Management Best Practices From Top Organizations2

8 Best Practices for Setting Up a Visitor Management System3

Aligning IT strategy with business strategy primarily helps an organization to optimize investments in IT. This is because alignment ensures that IT resources and capabilities are aligned with the business goals and priorities, and that IT delivers value to the business in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, innovation, and competitive advantage12. By aligning IT strategy with business strategy, an organization can avoid wasting money and time on IT projects or services that do not support or contribute to the business outcomes3. Alignment also helps to identify and prioritize the most critical and valuable IT initiatives that can create or optimize business value4.

Therefore, the correct answer to your question is A. optimize investments in IT.

The most effective method for detecting the presence of an unauthorized wireless access point on an internal network is A. Continuous network monitoring. This is because continuous network monitoring can capture and analyze all the wireless traffic in the network and identify any rogue or spoofed devices that may be connected to the network without authorization. Continuous network monitoring can also alert the system administrator of any suspicious or anomalous activities on the network and help to locate and remove the unauthorized wireless access point quickly.

Periodic network vulnerability assessments (B) can also help to detect unauthorized wireless access points, but they are not as effective as continuous network monitoring, because they are performed at fixed intervals and may miss some devices that are added or removed between the assessments. Review of electronic access logs © can provide some information about the devices that access the network, but they may not be able to detect devices that use fake or stolen credentials or devices that do not generate any logs. Physical security reviews (D) can help to prevent unauthorized physical access to the network ports or devices, but they may not be able to detect wireless access points that are hidden or disguised as legitimate devices.