CRISC Risk and Control Monitoring and Reporting Practice Question
This CRISC practice question tests your understanding of risk and control monitoring and reporting. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company has implemented a key risk indicator (KRI) for system availability, with a threshold of 99.5%. The monitoring team observes that availability has dropped to 99.2% for two consecutive months. What is the most appropriate next step?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Notify the risk owner and initiate a root cause analysis.
Option C is correct because a sustained breach of a KRI threshold (99.2% vs. 99.5%) for two consecutive months indicates a systemic issue that requires formal risk management action. The risk owner must be notified to assess the impact, and a root cause analysis (RCA) should be initiated to identify underlying failures—such as network congestion, hardware faults, or software bugs—before any remediation is planned.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Implement additional redundancy to improve availability.
Why it's wrong here
Action should be based on investigation, not automatic.
✗
Increase the threshold to 99.0% to avoid false alarms.
Why it's wrong here
Changing thresholds without analysis is inappropriate.
✓
Notify the risk owner and initiate a root cause analysis.
Why this is correct
Standard practice for threshold breaches.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Escalate immediately to the board of directors.
Why it's wrong here
Board escalation is for significant breaches.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often jump to immediate remediation (Option A) or threshold adjustment (Option B), failing to recognize that the CRISC framework mandates a structured risk response starting with notification and analysis before any control changes.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
In practice, system availability is often measured using uptime monitoring tools (e.g., Nagios, PRTG) that track HTTP/HTTPS response codes or ICMP echo replies. A drop from 99.5% to 99.2% over two months corresponds to roughly 2.2 hours of additional downtime per month (based on a 30-day month), which could be caused by cumulative minor outages or a single recurring failure. The RCA should examine logs for patterns—such as time-of-day failures, memory leaks, or certificate expiry—to distinguish between random noise and a genuine degradation trend.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A practitioner preparing for the CRISC exam encounters this exact type of scenario on the job. The correct answer here is not the most general option — it is the best answer for the specific constraint described. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Real exam questions reward reading the full scenario before eliminating options, because the constraint defines which answer fits.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Risk and Control Monitoring and Reporting — This question tests Risk and Control Monitoring and Reporting — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Notify the risk owner and initiate a root cause analysis. — Option C is correct because a sustained breach of a KRI threshold (99.2% vs. 99.5%) for two consecutive months indicates a systemic issue that requires formal risk management action. The risk owner must be notified to assess the impact, and a root cause analysis (RCA) should be initiated to identify underlying failures—such as network congestion, hardware faults, or software bugs—before any remediation is planned.
What should I do if I get this CRISC question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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