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CRISC Practice Question: A retail company has a risk monitoring program…
A retail company has a risk monitoring program that tracks key risk indicators (KRIs) for its e-commerce platform. One KRI measures the number of failed payment transactions as a percentage of total transactions. The threshold is set at 2%. Over the past quarter, the KRI has been fluctuating between 1.8% and 2.5%, breaching the threshold several times. Each time the KRI exceeded the threshold, the risk owner performed a manual investigation and found that the failures were due to transient network issues that resolved on their own. The risk owner has now requested that the threshold be raised to 3% to avoid unnecessary investigations. The risk practitioner is evaluating this request. What should the risk practitioner do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume raising the threshold is a simple risk acceptance decision, but CRISC emphasizes that risk responses must be based on understanding the root cause, not just adjusting metrics to avoid investigations.
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
✓
Recommend a root cause analysis to determine why network issues are recurring before considering a threshold change.
The recurring network issues causing threshold breaches indicate an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, not just a threshold adjustment. Raising the threshold without understanding the root cause could mask a significant risk to transaction integrity and revenue. A root cause analysis (RCA) would identify whether the transient network issues stem from infrastructure, configuration, or external dependencies, enabling a proper control response.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Approve the threshold increase since investigations have not found any significant issues.
Why it's wrong here
Raising the threshold merely suppresses alerts without addressing why failures occur, so the practitioner should not approve it. Threshold tuning is tempting when investigations repeatedly find nothing actionable, and it would be valid only after evidence shows the KRI no longer reflects the risk.
- ✗
Suggest implementing automated remediation for network issues instead of raising the threshold.
Why it's wrong here
Automated remediation addresses the network cause rather than masking it, but the question asks how to handle the threshold request, not to substitute a control. Remediation is tempting because it reduces recurrence, and it would be correct where the root cause is confirmed and fixable.
- ✓
Recommend a root cause analysis to determine why network issues are recurring before considering a threshold change.
Why this is correct
Recurring transient network failures indicate an unresolved underlying cause, not a benign baseline shift. Raising the threshold to 3% would suppress detection of genuine degradation, weakening the KRI's monitoring objective. Root cause analysis first establishes whether the failures stem from infrastructure capacity, vendor reliability, or configuration, ensuring any threshold revision reflects validated risk appetite rather than investigation fatigue.
- ✗
Reject the request and require investigation of every breach.
Why it's wrong here
Rejecting outright ignores the investigation evidence that breaches were transient and self-resolving, so blanket investigation wastes effort without improving risk insight. Mandatory investigation suits KRIs tied to genuine control failures, not those driven by transient infrastructure noise.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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