CAS-004 Governance, Risk, and Compliance Practice Question
When conducting a vendor risk assessment, which contractual clause is most important for ensuring ongoing visibility into the vendor's security posture?
⚠ Common exam trap
CAS-005 often tests the confusion between clauses that compensate after an incident (indemnification, SLA credits) and clauses that provide proactive, ongoing visibility (right-to-audit).
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Right-to-audit clause
A right-to-audit clause contractually grants the customer the ability to inspect the vendor's security controls, processes, and records — either directly or via third-party reports like SOC 2. This is the mechanism that provides ongoing visibility into the vendor's security posture over the life of the relationship, not just at onboarding. Without it, the customer has no enforceable means to verify that controls remain effective.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Indemnification clause
Why it's wrong here
Indemnification allocates financial liability after a breach; it grants no continuing insight into controls, patching or monitoring. It is tempting because it is a standard risk-transfer clause, and would be the priority when the goal is recovering losses rather than maintaining ongoing assurance through audit and reporting rights.
- ✓
Right-to-audit clause
Why this is correct
A right-to-audit clause contractually grants the organisation the ability to inspect the vendor's controls, records and security practises on an ongoing basis. This directly satisfies the requirement for continuing visibility into the vendor's security posture, unlike one-off certifications or SLAs, which only report point-in-time or service-level assurances.
- ✗
Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)
Why it's wrong here
NDAs protect confidentiality but do not grant audit access.
- ✗
Service level agreement (SLA)
Why it's wrong here
An SLA defines performance and availability targets, not security posture reporting, so it cannot deliver ongoing visibility. It is tempting because SLAs are common vendor contracts and would be correct when the requirement is measurable service uptime, response times or remediation deadlines.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 973 original CAS-005 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
This CAS-005 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CAS-005 exam.