ISC2 CC Security Principles Practice Question
A company's security policy states that only staff in the finance department may access the general ledger, and that access must be reviewed every quarter. An auditor finds that two former finance employees still hold active accounts with ledger permissions. Which concept has the organization FAILED to apply?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is focusing on the missed quarterly review as the only failure, when the deeper issue is that people without a current business need retain access at all.
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
✓
Need to know
Need to know restricts access to information strictly to individuals whose duties require it. Former finance employees have no current business justification for ledger permissions, so their active accounts violate this principle regardless of whether they have logged in. The quarterly review requirement exists precisely to catch and remove such stale entitlements before they become an insider threat.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Non-repudiation
Why it's wrong here
Non-repudiation ensures that a person cannot deny performing an action, typically through digital signatures or tamper-evident logging. The scenario is about stale entitlements rather than about proving who did what. Even perfect logging would not fix the underlying problem that people without a business need retain access to sensitive financial records.
- ✓
Need to know
Why this is correct
Need to know means access to information is granted only to those who require it to perform their duties. The two former employees no longer work in finance, so they have no business need for ledger access, yet their permissions persist. The failure to remove access when the need ended is the essence of a need-to-know violation and a common audit finding.
- ✗
Integrity
Why it's wrong here
Integrity means data is accurate, complete, and protected from unauthorised modification. The former employees' lingering access could eventually threaten integrity, but nothing in the scenario indicates the ledger was altered. The concrete failure described is that people who no longer need the data can still reach it, which is a need-to-know and access-review issue.
- ✗
Availability
Why it's wrong here
Availability ensures systems and data are accessible to authorised users when required. The ledger remains available; the issue is that access is broader than it should be. Confusing an access-scope problem with an availability problem would lead the organisation to focus on uptime and redundancy instead of cleaning up entitlements.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Threat
A threat is any potential danger that could harm a computer system, network, or data, whether from a malicious hacker, a natural disaster, or an accidental mistake.
Key term
Need to know
Need to know is a security principle that restricts access to information or resources only to individuals who require that access to perform their job duties.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official ISC2 exam blueprint
This CC practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CC exam.