easyMultiple Choice
CISM Practice Question: Is the PRIMARY purpose of an incident response…
Which of the following is the PRIMARY purpose of an incident response plan?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISACA often tests the distinction between primary purpose and secondary benefits; candidates mistakenly choose regulatory compliance (Option D) because they confuse a common driver for implementing a plan with its fundamental operational objective.
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
✓
To provide a systematic method for responding to incidents
The primary purpose of an incident response plan is to establish a structured, systematic methodology for detecting, containing, eradicating, and recovering from security incidents. This ensures that the organization can minimize damage, reduce recovery time and costs, and preserve evidence for forensic analysis. Without a predefined plan, responses become ad hoc, increasing the likelihood of errors and extended downtime.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
To assign blame for security failures
Why it's wrong here
Assigning blame is a post-incident human-resources or disciplinary activity, not the plan's purpose; an incident response plan coordinates containment, eradication, and recovery. Blame assignment is tempting because investigations do identify responsible parties, and it would be relevant in a disciplinary or legal proceeding rather than during technical incident handling.
- ✗
To prevent all security incidents from occurring
Why it's wrong here
No plan can prevent every incident; prevention belongs to controls such as patching, segmentation, and monitoring, whereas the incident response plan governs detection, containment, and recovery once an event occurs. Prevention is tempting because incident response and security operations are often conflated, and it would be the correct framing for a vulnerability management programme.
- ✓
To provide a systematic method for responding to incidents
Why this is correct
An incident response plan defines the structured, repeatable phases — preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery and lessons learned — that guide responders. This systematic method reduces confusion and ad hoc decisions during incidents, which is its primary purpose.
- ✗
To meet regulatory compliance requirements
Why it's wrong here
Regulatory compliance may be an outcome of having a documented plan, but the primary purpose is to contain, eradicate, and recover from incidents in a coordinated manner. Compliance is tempting because auditors routinely request the plan as evidence, and it would be the driving reason when a specific regulation mandates documented incident handling.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CISM question from scratch — 924 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.