CISM Incident Management Practice Question
During a major incident, the incident response team discovers that the incident cannot be resolved within the maximum tolerable downtime (MTD). Which of the following actions should be taken next?
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
✓
Escalate to activate the business continuity and disaster recovery plans
When an incident cannot be resolved within the MTD, it triggers the transition to business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plans to maintain critical operations.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Continue incident response efforts until resolution regardless of time
Why it's wrong here
Exceeding the MTD means the maximum tolerable downtime is breached, so continuing response prolongs outage beyond acceptable loss. Escalation to invoke the business continuity or disaster recovery plan is required. Continued response suits incidents still within MTD where containment and eradication remain viable.
- ✗
Declare the incident a disaster and shut down all systems
Why it's wrong here
Shutting down all systems removes remaining capacity and worsens the outage; the next step is invoking the disaster recovery plan to restore service within the recovery time objective. Declaring a disaster is tempting because MTD breach is a trigger, but full shutdown is not the prescribed response.
- ✗
Notify the insurance provider immediately
Why it's wrong here
Insurance notification addresses financial recovery, not service restoration, so it cannot resolve downtime exceeding the MTD. It is tempting because insurers must often be told promptly, but that applies after invoking the continuity or disaster recovery plan, not as the immediate next action.
- ✓
Escalate to activate the business continuity and disaster recovery plans
Why this is correct
Exceeding the maximum tolerable downtime means recovery within the primary environment is no longer viable, so escalating to activate business continuity and disaster recovery plans restores critical services through alternate arrangements. This directly satisfies the MTD constraint.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISM 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 CISM exam.