hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
CRISC Practice Question: The IT risk manager for a multinational…
You are the IT risk manager for a multinational corporation with a hybrid cloud environment. The company uses AWS for its primary infrastructure and maintains an on-premises data center for legacy applications. Recently, the security team detected that a contractor's credentials were used to access an S3 bucket containing personally identifiable information (PII) of European customers. The contractor had been granted access to this bucket six months ago for a data migration project that has since been completed. The access was not revoked. The security team has implemented an automated process to review and revoke access for contractors after project completion, but this process has not been applied retroactively. The company is subject to GDPR. Which of the following is the BEST course of action to address the immediate risk?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose a forensic or process-improvement option (A or D) because they seem thorough, but the question asks for the BEST course of action to address the immediate risk, which is to stop the active unauthorized access first before investigating or improving long-term processes.
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
✓
Immediately revoke the contractor's access and initiate a review of all contractor accounts to revoke any unnecessary permissions.
The immediate risk is that the contractor still has active access to an S3 bucket containing PII, which violates GDPR's principle of data minimization and access control (Article 5(1)(f)). Revoking the contractor's access now stops any ongoing unauthorized access, and initiating a review of all contractor accounts addresses the systemic failure to apply the automated process retroactively. This directly mitigates the risk of further data exposure without delay.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Conduct a forensic investigation to determine if any data was exfiltrated, then update the incident response plan.
Why it's wrong here
Investigation is important but does not stop ongoing access.
- ✓
Immediately revoke the contractor's access and initiate a review of all contractor accounts to revoke any unnecessary permissions.
Why this is correct
This directly mitigates the immediate risk of unauthorized access.
- ✗
Manually review access rights for all contractors and revoke those not needed, starting with the most sensitive systems.
Why it's wrong here
Manual review is time-consuming and may not be immediate.
- ✗
Update the automated access review process to include all existing contractor accounts and schedule it to run weekly.
Why it's wrong here
Policy change is a long-term fix, not an immediate response.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.