hardMultiple Choice
CRISC Practice Question: A financial institution is implementing a new…
A financial institution is implementing a new risk monitoring tool that aggregates data from multiple sources. The tool is expected to provide real-time dashboards for risk committees. However, during user acceptance testing, the dashboards show inconsistent data due to time zone differences across sources. What is the best approach to resolve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose Option A, thinking that displaying local times separately is a 'user-friendly' solution, but they fail to recognize that the core requirement is consistent, comparable data for risk committees, not individual source readability.
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
✓
Standardize all timestamps to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during data ingestion.
Standardizing all timestamps to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during data ingestion ensures a single, unambiguous reference point for all aggregated data. This eliminates the root cause of inconsistency—differing local time zones—at the point of data entry, allowing the real-time dashboards to display consistent, comparable metrics regardless of the source's geographic location. This approach aligns with the principle of normalizing data at the earliest stage of the data pipeline, which is a fundamental practice in risk monitoring and reporting.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Modify the dashboard to display each source's local time separately.
Why it's wrong here
Displaying each source's local time separately leaves the committee comparing mismatched timestamps, so no single consistent view exists for correlation. Converting all timestamps to one reference zone during ingestion is required. Per-source local display suits forensic drill-down into one system, not aggregated real-time risk dashboards.
- ✗
Ask each source to adjust their time zone to the corporate headquarters time zone.
Why it's wrong here
Forcing every source onto headquarters time zone breaks each system's own operational and audit context, and cannot be imposed on external or third-party feeds. Normalising timestamps to UTC within the aggregation layer preserves source integrity. Standardising source clocks is tempting when all sources sit under one administrative domain.
- ✓
Standardize all timestamps to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during data ingestion.
Why this is correct
Normalising every source's timestamps to UTC at ingestion removes the offset discrepancies causing inconsistent dashboards. Converting once, centrally, ensures all aggregated records share one comparable time axis, so real-time committee views reconcile correctly regardless of each source's local time zone.
- ✗
Use the time zone of the majority of sources and convert others.
Why it's wrong here
Standardising on a majority time zone still leaves minority sources converted at ingest, so daylight-saving transitions and offset arithmetic produce the same inconsistencies the committees saw. It appeals because it minimises conversion work when sources cluster in one region. The correct approach normalises all timestamps to UTC at ingestion, converting only for display.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CRISC 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 CRISC exam.