CRISC Risk Response and Reporting Practice Question
During a vendor risk assessment, an organization discovers that a critical vendor has not performed a security assessment in two years. The vendor is tiered as 'medium risk'. According to best practices, what should the risk practitioner recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume 'medium risk' automatically justifies risk acceptance (Option C), but CRISC requires that acceptance be based on current control evidence, not just the risk tier label.
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
✓
Request a current SOC 2 report or equivalent assessment
A SOC 2 report (or equivalent, such as an ISO 27001 certification or a SIG assessment) provides independent assurance over a vendor's controls, including security monitoring and assessment cadence. Since the vendor is tiered as 'medium risk' and has not performed a security assessment in two years, the risk practitioner should request current evidence of control effectiveness rather than accept, ignore, or escalate the risk prematurely. This aligns with the CRISC principle of verifying control status before making risk response decisions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Request a current SOC 2 report or equivalent assessment
Why this is correct
A current SOC 2 report provides independent assurance over the vendor's control environment, closing the two-year evidence gap. Requesting it satisfies the assessment requirement proportionately, since medium-tier vendors warrant validated attestation rather than full on-site audits, enabling informed tiering and remediation decisions.
- ✗
Downgrade the vendor to low risk to reduce monitoring frequency
Why it's wrong here
Downgrading a critical vendor contradicts the tiering itself: criticality, not assessment history, sets the tier, and skipping assessments raises exposure rather than lowering it. Tiering exists to match due diligence effort to inherent risk, so it would be the right action only if the vendor's criticality had genuinely decreased.
- ✗
Accept the risk because the vendor is only medium risk
Why it's wrong here
Acceptance leaves the unassessed control posture unquantified, so the organisation cannot demonstrate that medium-tier residual risk is tolerable. Risk acceptance is valid once an assessment establishes the exposure and management formally approves it; here the missing assessment is precisely what must be remediated first.
- ✗
Terminate the relationship immediately
Why it's wrong here
Termination is a last resort; first, obtain current assessment.
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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.