CISA Practice Question: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience
During a change management audit, an IS auditor finds that a critical system change was approved by the change manager without a CAB meeting. The change was categorized as a standard change. Which of the following should the auditor do FIRST?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume any change approved without a CAB meeting is a control failure, but they overlook the critical first step of verifying whether the change was correctly classified as a standard change, which is pre-approved and does not require CAB involvement.
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
✓
Determine if the change was correctly classified as standard
The auditor's first step must be to verify whether the change was correctly classified as a standard change, because standard changes are pre-approved and do not require a CAB meeting. If the classification is correct, the process was followed; if not, the lack of CAB approval is a control failure. This aligns with ITIL best practices, where standard changes are low-risk, pre-authorized changes with a defined procedure, and the auditor must confirm the classification before escalating or recommending action.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Report a lack of segregation of duties
Why it's wrong here
Segregation of duties concerns the separation of who develops, approves and deploys a change. Here the change manager approved a change without CAB review, so the failure is the misclassification and bypassed authorisation, not a single person holding conflicting duties. SoD reporting fits environments where one individual controls multiple incompatible change phases.
- ✗
Recommend immediate rollback of the change
Why it's wrong here
Rollback is a remediation action, not the auditor's first step; the auditor must first gather evidence and determine whether the standard-change categorisation was justified before recommending reversal. Rollback would be appropriate only once a change is confirmed to have introduced an unacceptable risk or fault.
- ✗
Escalate to senior management
Why it's wrong here
Escalation bypasses the auditor's own evidence-gathering and reporting process; the first step is to determine whether the standard-change classification was valid, since standard changes are pre-authorised and need no CAB review. Escalating to senior management is warranted only after confirming that the classification was improper and management failed to act.
- ✓
Determine if the change was correctly classified as standard
Why this is correct
Standard changes are pre-authorised precisely because they are low risk and routine, so no CAB review is needed. The auditor must first verify whether this change genuinely met the standard-change criteria before judging the approval process deficient.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.