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CRISC Practice Question: A regional bank uses a centralized GRC platform…
A regional bank uses a centralized GRC platform to monitor key risk indicators (KRIs) for operational risk. The chief risk officer (CRO) reviews the monthly risk report and notices that the KRI 'number of system outages exceeding 4 hours' has been consistently reported as 0 for the past six months. However, the IT incident log shows three such outages in the same period. The CRO suspects the KRI is not being accurately reported. What should the risk manager do next?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse the need to remediate the reporting failure with the need to remediate the risk itself, leading them to choose an option that addresses the outages directly (like adding controls or updating the register) rather than first diagnosing the KRI data pipeline.
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
✓
Investigate the KRI calculation and data feed to identify why outages are not being captured
The risk manager must first investigate the KRI calculation and data feed to determine why the IT incident log shows three outages but the KRI reports zero. Without understanding the root cause of the reporting discrepancy—whether it is a data integration error, a threshold misconfiguration, or a failure in the GRC platform's automated data collection—any subsequent action would be premature and could mask the underlying control monitoring failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add additional controls to reduce the likelihood of system outages
Why it's wrong here
Adding controls addresses outage likelihood, but the CRO's concern is that the KRI reports zero while the incident log shows three outages, a data accuracy and reporting integrity problem. Additional controls would be correct if outages were genuinely occurring and the KRI were capturing them faithfully.
- ✗
Update the risk register to reflect the recent outage incidents
Why it's wrong here
Updating the risk register records the incidents but does not correct the KRI feeding the GRC platform, so future reports would still show zero. Register updates suit documenting newly identified risks, whereas here the indicator's data source or calculation requires investigation and remediation.
- ✓
Investigate the KRI calculation and data feed to identify why outages are not being captured
Why this is correct
The discrepancy between the KRI value and the incident log points to a data or calculation fault, so tracing the KRI's calculation logic and source data feed identifies why outages are excluded before any reporting change.
- ✗
Increase the KRI threshold to 2 outages to align with historical data
Why it's wrong here
Raising the threshold to 2 masks the discrepancy by redefining the metric, leaving the reporting gap unresolved and understating operational risk. Threshold tuning would be appropriate when a KRI is accurate but generates excessive false positives, not when reported values contradict source incident records.
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JA
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.