Pass CRISC Exam Guide

Ensuring Timely Recovery of Critical Business Operations:

Primary Focus: The primary focus of a Disaster Recovery Management (DRM) framework is to ensure that critical business operations can be recovered and resumed in a timely manner after a disruption.

Business Continuity: Timely recovery of operations is essential for maintaining business continuity and minimizing the impact of disruptions on the organization’s ability to deliver products and services.

Recovery Objectives: Establishing clear recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) ensures that critical operations are prioritized and recovery efforts are aligned with business needs.

Comparison with Other Options:

Restoring IT and Cybersecurity Operations: While important, this is part of the broader goal of recovering critical business operations.

Assessing Impact and Probability of Disaster Scenarios: This is a preparatory step that informs the DRM framework but is not the primary focus.

Determining Capacity for Alternate Sites: This is a component of the DRM strategy but supports the primary focus of ensuring timely recovery.

Best Practices:

Comprehensive Planning: Develop comprehensive disaster recovery plans that prioritize the recovery of critical business operations.

Regular Testing: Regularly test and update disaster recovery plans to ensure they remain effective and aligned with business objectives.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Involve all relevant business units in disaster recovery planning to ensure a coordinated and effective response.

References:

CRISC Review Manual: Emphasizes the importance of focusing on the recovery of critical business operations to ensure business continuity.

ISACA Guidelines: Recommend prioritizing the timely recovery of critical operations as the primary goal of disaster recovery management efforts.

According to the ISACA Risk and Information Systems Control study guide and handbook, the most comprehensive approach to capture the risk scenario of collecting and storing credit card information is event tree analysis (ETA). ETA is a forward, top-down, logical modeling technique that explores the responses and outcomes of a single initiating event, such as a data breach or a cyberattack. ETA can help to identify all possible consequences of the scenario, such as financial losses, reputational damages, legal liabilities, regulatory penalties, and customer dissatisfaction. ETA can also help to assess the probabilities of the outcomes and the effectiveness of the controls and mitigation strategies12

1: ISACA Risk and Information Systems Control Study Guide, 4th Edition, page 33 2: ISACA Risk and Information Systems Control Handbook, 1st Edition, page 25

 The most effective way to promote organization-wide awareness of data security in response to an increase in regulatory penalties for data leakage is to require training on the data handling policy, as it educates the employees on the importance, requirements, and procedures of data protection, and enhances their knowledge and skills to prevent, detect, and respond to data leakage incidents. Enforcingsanctions for noncompliance with security procedures, conducting organization-wide phishing simulations, and requiring regular testing of the data breach response plan are not the most effective ways, as they are more related to the enforcement, evaluation, or improvement of the data security, respectively, rather than the promotion of the data security awareness. References = CRISC Review Manual, 7th Edition, page 155.

Backups are the best control to mitigate the impact of a failed IT system upgrade project that has resulted in the corruption of an organization’s asset inventory database, as they allow the organization to restore the data from a previous state and resume normal operations. Encryption, authentication, and configuration are not the best controls, as they do not address the data corruption issue, but rather the datasecurity, access, and quality issues, respectively. References = CRISC Review Manual, 7th Edition, page 153.