ISC2 CC Security Principles Practice Question
A security team identifies a vulnerability in a web application that could allow attackers to steal customer data. The team decides to accept the risk because the cost to fix exceeds the potential loss. This is an example of:
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
✓
Risk acceptance
Risk acceptance means acknowledging the risk and choosing not to mitigate it, often due to cost-benefit analysis.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Risk transfer
Why it's wrong here
Transferring risk means shifting the financial consequence to a third party, typically via cyber-insurance or an outsourced contract. Here the team retains the loss itself, having judged remediation costlier than the potential impact, which is acceptance. Transfer would be correct if an insurer or partner agreed to bear the loss.
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Risk avoidance
Why it's wrong here
Avoidance eliminates the activity or asset generating the risk entirely, such as decommissioning the vulnerable application. This team keeps the application running and simply tolerates the exposure, which is acceptance. Avoidance would be correct if the business could abandon the web application outright.
- ✓
Risk acceptance
Why this is correct
Accepting the risk means the organisation acknowledges the vulnerability but chooses to tolerate it because remediation costs outweigh the potential financial loss. This deliberate decision to absorb the residual risk, rather than mitigate, transfer or avoid it, is the defining characteristic of risk acceptance within the risk management process.
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Risk mitigation
Why it's wrong here
Mitigation applies a control that lowers the likelihood or impact, such as patching or a WAF rule. The team here applies no control and consciously retains the exposure because remediation costs exceed expected loss, which is acceptance. Mitigation would be correct if they deployed a compensating safeguard.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Risk Management and Security Controls
Key term
Analysis
In incident response, analysis is the process of examining data and events to determine what happened, how it happened, and what actions to take.
Key term
Risk
Risk is the possibility that an event or action will negatively affect an organization's ability to achieve its goals, often measured in terms of likelihood and impact.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.