CRISC Risk Response and Mitigation Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates 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.
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
✓
Reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications
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.
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 address only financial loss, leaving reputational damage and customer trust unmitigated, and they do not correct the flawed 'low' residual rating. Penalty escalation suits suppliers repeatedly breaching measurable service targets; this scenario requires reassessing the risk and strengthening treatment beyond contractual remedies.
- ✗
Initiate a legal claim against the provider
Why it's wrong here
Litigation recovers contractual penalties but cannot restore customer trust or reputational loss, and the SLA already caps compensation. Legal action suits deliberate breach or unfulfilled contractual obligations; here the practitioner must reassess the risk and treatment plan, not pursue damages for an incident the SLA anticipated.
- ✗
Update the risk register to reflect the incident and accept the residual risk
Why it's wrong here
Accepting residual risk contradicts the evidence: the incident proved the 'low' rating wrong, and the SLA left reputational exposure untreated. Acceptance fits risks within appetite after full evaluation; here the practitioner must reassess likelihood and impact and revise the treatment plan before any acceptance decision.
- ✓
Reassess the risk and recommend implementing a multi-cloud architecture for critical applications
Why this is correct
The SLA-only treatment failed to address reputational and trust losses, so residual risk was misrated as low. Reassessing and recommending multi-cloud architecture for critical applications removes single-provider dependency, directly addressing the concentration risk the outage exposed and satisfying management's demand for a revised treatment.
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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.