CRISC IT Risk Assessment Practice Question
Which risk treatment option involves eliminating the activity that creates the risk?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'avoid' with 'mitigate' because both involve reducing risk, but avoid eliminates the activity entirely while mitigate keeps the activity running with controls in place.
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
✓
Avoid
(Avoid) is correct because risk avoidance involves discontinuing the activity or process that gives rise to the risk. In IT risk management, this means removing the vulnerable system, decommissioning a service, or ceasing a business function entirely to eliminate the risk exposure. For example, if an organization decides to shut down a legacy FTP server to avoid the risk of data interception, it is applying the avoid treatment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Accept
Why it's wrong here
Acceptance retains the activity and its risk, budgeting for any loss rather than removing the source, so it cannot satisfy a requirement to eliminate the activity. It is tempting because acceptance is a legitimate treatment for low-impact risks where the cost of other controls exceeds the potential loss.
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Transfer
Why it's wrong here
Transfer shifts financial impact to a third party through insurance or contracts, but the risky activity continues unchanged, so the risk source is not eliminated. It is tempting because transfer genuinely suits scenarios where the organisation wants to cap financial exposure while continuing the activity.
- ✓
Avoid
Why this is correct
Avoidance eliminates the activity generating the risk entirely, satisfying the stem's requirement to remove the source rather than mitigate, transfer or accept it. Unlike mitigation, which reduces likelihood or impact, avoidance erases the exposure by discontinuing the underlying process, making it the only treatment that structurally removes risk at origin.
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Mitigate
Why it's wrong here
Mitigate reduces the probability or impact of the risk while the activity continues; eliminating the activity entirely is avoidance. It is tempting because mitigation is the most commonly applied treatment, and would be correct if the stem described adding controls rather than stopping the work.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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