CRISC IT Risk Assessment Practice Question
An organization is evaluating the business impact of a potential ransomware attack. Which TWO impact categories should be considered as direct financial losses? (Select TWO)
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
✓
Incident response and recovery costs
Direct financial losses include costs directly incurred from the incident, such as incident response and recovery, and notification costs. Lost business and reputation damage are indirect costs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Incident response and recovery costs
Why this is correct
These are direct costs of responding to and recovering from the attack.
- ✗
Reputation damage and customer trust loss
Why it's wrong here
Reputational impact is indirect and not directly quantifiable as a direct cost.
- ✗
Lost business due to downtime
Why it's wrong here
Lost business is an indirect financial impact.
- ✓
Notification costs to affected parties
Why this is correct
Notification costs are direct expenses incurred as a result of the breach.
- ✗
Regulatory fines
Why it's wrong here
Regulatory fines are direct but typically considered under regulatory impact, not direct financial losses in this context. However, the question focuses on direct financial losses; fines are direct, but the intended correct answers are A and C as per typical classification. Actually, fines are direct too, but the question says 'TWO' and the best two are incident response and notification. Regulatory fines could be argued, but the typical breakdown in CRISC separates direct costs as those for response and notification.
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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.