CISM Incident Management Practice Question
During a P1 incident, the incident response team identifies that the root cause is a misconfigured firewall. According to best practices, which of the following should be the PRIMARY focus of the root cause analysis?
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
✓
Determining why the firewall was misconfigured and why the change management process failed
Root cause analysis should identify not only the technical cause but also the process and management failures that allowed the misconfiguration to occur.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Patching the firewall immediately
Why it's wrong here
Patching the firewall is containment and remediation, not analysis; the root cause analysis must determine why the misconfiguration occurred and how to prevent recurrence. It is tempting because restoring service is urgent during a P1, and patching would be correct as the immediate containment action alongside the analysis.
- ✗
Conducting a lessons learned meeting immediately
Why it's wrong here
A lessons learned meeting documents findings after analysis concludes; holding it immediately, before the misconfiguration's cause is examined, produces no corrective actions. It is tempting because lessons learned is a recognised post-incident step, and it would be correct once the root cause analysis has actually been completed.
- ✓
Determining why the firewall was misconfigured and why the change management process failed
Why this is correct
Best practise targets the systemic layer: why the misconfiguration occurred and why change management failed to catch it. Fixing only the firewall setting leaves the governance weakness intact, so the same class of error recurs.
- ✗
Restoring the firewall from backup
Why it's wrong here
Restoring from backup reverts the configuration without establishing why it was misconfigured, so the same fault can recur. It is tempting because restoration quickly returns the firewall to a known-good state, and it would be correct as the recovery step once the root cause has been identified.
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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.