CISA Practice Question: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience
An IT auditor is reviewing the change management process for a financial institution. The auditor finds that emergency changes are frequently approved by the change manager without CAB review. Which risk is most associated with this practice?
⚠ Common exam trap
CISA often tests the difference between a risk and an inefficiency; candidates may choose 'delayed incident resolution' because they think bypassing CAB speeds things up, but the question asks for the risk of bypassing, which is unauthorized changes.
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
✓
Increase in unauthorized changes
Emergency changes approved without CAB review bypass the normal oversight and segregation of duties, increasing the risk that unauthorized or malicious changes are introduced. The change manager alone may not have the authority or expertise to assess all risks, leading to potential fraud, errors, or security breaches. This is a classic control weakness in change management.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Increase in unauthorized changes
Why this is correct
Bypassing CAB review removes independent oversight, so the change manager alone authorises emergency changes. That concentrates approval authority in one person, enabling changes to be implemented without detection or challenge — directly increasing the risk of unauthorised changes, the specific risk the stem's missing segregation of duties creates.
- ✗
Excessive documentation overhead
Why it's wrong here
Emergency changes bypassing CAB review create unauthorised or unreviewed alterations, not paperwork volume; the risk is uncontrolled change, not documentation burden. Documentation overhead is a genuine concern where CAB review is mandatory for every routine change, so teams seek lighter paths for low-risk updates — but that scenario involves over-governance, not absent approval.
- ✗
Delayed incident resolution
Why it's wrong here
Delayed incident resolution describes a consequence of slow approval, whereas bypassing CAB accelerates deployment at the cost of oversight. The risk here is unreviewed change introducing errors or unauthorised modification. Delayed resolution would be the correct concern if the process required full CAB review before any emergency fix could proceed.
- ✗
Inadequate backup procedures
Why it's wrong here
Backup procedures are a separate operational control; skipping CAB review does not affect whether backups exist or restore. The actual exposure is unreviewed changes introducing faults or fraud. Inadequate backups would be the finding where restore tests fail or backup schedules are missing, which this stem does not describe.
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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 ISACA exam blueprint
This CISA practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISACA 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 CISA exam.