ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
An organization discovers a ransomware infection on a critical server. According to the incident response phases, what should be the first action after detection?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse the urgency of recovery actions (like restoring from backup) with the correct incident response sequence, forgetting that containment must always come first to stop the spread and preserve forensic evidence.
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
✓
Contain the affected system
Immediately after detection, the priority is to contain the ransomware to prevent it from spreading laterally to other systems. According to NIST SP 800-61 and standard incident response frameworks, containment is the first step after detection and analysis, as it limits damage and preserves evidence for forensic investigation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Notify law enforcement
Why it's wrong here
Notification may be necessary but is not the immediate first action; containment is critical.
- ✗
Eradicate the malware from the server
Why it's wrong here
Eradication should follow containment to avoid spreading during cleanup.
- ✗
Restore from backup
Why it's wrong here
Recovery comes after containment and eradication.
- ✓
Contain the affected system
Why this is correct
Containment stops the incident from spreading, which is the immediate priority.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Incident Response and Management
Key term
Detection
Detection is the process of identifying potential security incidents or anomalies by analyzing system data, logs, and network traffic.
Key term
Organization
An Organization is a top-level container in Google Cloud that represents your company or entities and serves as the root node for all your cloud resources, policies, and access control.
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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.