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CRISC Practice Question: The IT risk manager for a financial institution
You are the IT risk manager for a financial institution. During a routine vulnerability scan, you discover that a critical web application has a high-severity vulnerability that could allow remote code execution. The development team states that a patch is not yet available from the vendor, and the application is business-critical with no acceptable downtime. The risk owner wants to accept the risk. However, the organization's risk appetite is very low for security vulnerabilities. You have been asked to recommend a course of action. Which of the following should you recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse risk transfer (insurance) with risk mitigation, or assume that accepting risk is always valid when the risk owner agrees, ignoring the organization's stated risk appetite.
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
✓
Implement a web application firewall (WAF) with virtual patching to reduce exploitability.
Implementing a web application firewall (WAF) with virtual patching provides an immediate, compensating control that reduces the exploitability of the vulnerability without requiring application downtime. This aligns with the organization's low risk appetite by actively mitigating the risk while waiting for an official vendor patch, rather than passively accepting it.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Transfer the risk by purchasing cyber insurance.
Why it's wrong here
Does not reduce likelihood or impact.
- ✗
Decommission the application immediately.
Why it's wrong here
Not feasible due to business criticality.
- ✓
Implement a web application firewall (WAF) with virtual patching to reduce exploitability.
Why this is correct
Provides compensating control until patch is available.
- ✗
Accept the risk as the team will monitor for patches.
Why it's wrong here
Does not align with low risk appetite.
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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.