The answer is to reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications. This is correct because the incident revealed that the existing risk treatment—relying solely on an SLA with financial penalties—failed to address the actual impact of reputational damage and loss of customer trust, meaning the residual risk was never truly low. The risk treatment reassessment process requires updating the risk register with post-incident data and proposing a more robust mitigation strategy, such as multi-cloud architecture, to reduce the likelihood or impact of a single provider’s failure. On the CRISC exam, this scenario tests your understanding that risk treatment is not static; an incident triggers a formal reassessment to close the gap between planned and actual residual risk. A common trap is choosing to simply update the SLA, which ignores unquantified reputational risks. Memory tip: “SLA covers dollars, not trust—reassess when the gap is unjust.”
CRISC Risk Response and Mitigation Practice Question
This CRISC practice question tests your understanding of risk response and mitigation. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
You are a risk practitioner at a financial institution that is migrating its core banking system to a cloud provider. The migration plan includes a phased approach, with the first phase moving non-critical applications. However, during the second phase (moving customer-facing applications), the cloud provider experiences a major outage that lasts 6 hours. The outage was caused by a misconfiguration in the provider's network. The institution had conducted a risk assessment and identified cloud provider downtime as a risk, but the treatment plan only included a service level agreement (SLA) with financial penalties. The SLA does not cover the reputational damage and loss of customer trust. The risk register shows that the residual risk level was marked as 'low' before the incident. After the incident, senior management is demanding a review. Which of the following is the MOST appropriate action for the risk practitioner to take?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "first"
Why it matters: Order matters here. You are being tested on which action comes before the others — not which action is generally useful.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications
Option D is correct because the incident revealed that the existing risk treatment (SLA financial penalties) was insufficient to address the actual impact (reputational damage and loss of customer trust). The risk practitioner must reassess the risk with the new information and recommend a more robust mitigation strategy, such as multi-cloud architecture, to reduce the likelihood or impact of a single provider's outage affecting critical customer-facing applications.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Negotiate a higher penalty in the SLA
Why it's wrong here
Higher penalties still do not prevent downtime or address reputational damage.
✗
Initiate a legal claim against the provider
Why it's wrong here
Legal action may compensate but does not mitigate future risk.
✗
Update the risk register to reflect the incident and accept the residual risk
Why it's wrong here
Acceptance without additional controls is inappropriate given the impact.
✓
Reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications
Why this is correct
Multi-cloud reduces dependency on a single provider and addresses the impact.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "first" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may think updating the risk register (Option C) is sufficient, but CRISC emphasizes that after a risk materializes with greater impact than assessed, the risk must be reassessed and the treatment plan revised, not just documented.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Multi-cloud architecture distributes critical workloads across independent cloud providers (e.g., AWS and Azure) using active-active or active-passive failover patterns, often orchestrated via DNS-based traffic management (e.g., Route53 latency routing or Azure Traffic Manager). This approach reduces the blast radius of a single provider's network misconfiguration (e.g., BGP route leak or firewall rule error) and aligns with the principle of defense in depth. In practice, financial institutions may also implement application-level retry logic and circuit breakers (e.g., using Netflix Hystrix or resilience4j) to handle transient failures gracefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A practitioner preparing for the CRISC exam encounters this exact type of scenario on the job. The correct answer here is not the most general option — it is the best answer for the specific constraint described. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Real exam questions reward reading the full scenario before eliminating options, because the constraint defines which answer fits.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Risk Response and Mitigation — This question tests Risk Response and Mitigation — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications — Option D is correct because the incident revealed that the existing risk treatment (SLA financial penalties) was insufficient to address the actual impact (reputational damage and loss of customer trust). The risk practitioner must reassess the risk with the new information and recommend a more robust mitigation strategy, such as multi-cloud architecture, to reduce the likelihood or impact of a single provider's outage affecting critical customer-facing applications.
What should I do if I get this CRISC question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "first". Order matters here. You are being tested on which action comes before the others — not which action is generally useful.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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