ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
An organization's incident response plan specifies containment, eradication, and recovery phases. During containment, the team isolates a compromised server from the network. However, the server is a domain controller. What is the PRIMARY risk of this action?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may focus on the general containment goal of stopping malware spread (Option C) rather than recognizing that isolating a domain controller specifically cripples the authentication infrastructure, which is the most critical and immediate risk.
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
✓
Loss of authentication services
Isolating a domain controller from the network prevents it from processing authentication requests (Kerberos and NTLM), which halts user logins, resource access, and group policy updates across the domain. This loss of authentication services is the primary risk because the domain controller is the authoritative source for identity verification in Active Directory.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Data loss on the server
Why it's wrong here
Data loss is not the primary consequence; isolating a domain controller severs authentication, Group Policy and directory replication for the entire environment. It is tempting because containment can interrupt writes, but the domain-wide loss of identity services, not local file loss, is the actual risk.
- ✗
Violation of chain of custody
Why it's wrong here
Isolating a domain controller removes authentication and directory services for the whole domain, so the primary risk is service-wide outage, not evidentiary integrity. Chain of custody concerns preserving logged evidence for legal admissibility, which applies when collecting or handling forensic artefacts, not when containing a live host.
- ✗
Propagation of malware to other systems
Why it's wrong here
Isolating a domain controller does not propagate malware; it removes the authentication and directory services other systems depend on, potentially disrupting the whole domain. It is tempting because lateral malware spread is a real containment concern, but that applies to isolating an infected workstation, not the identity infrastructure itself.
- ✓
Loss of authentication services
Why this is correct
A domain controller handles Kerberos ticket granting and directory authentication. Isolating it from the network immediately denies those services to domain members, so users and services cannot authenticate, potentially disrupting more of the environment than the original compromise.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Incident Response and Management
Key term
Policy
A policy is a set of rules or guidelines that defines how an organization manages, secures, and operates its IT systems and services.
Key term
Eradication
Eradication is the phase in incident response where the root cause of a security breach is completely removed from the system to prevent the attack from happening again.
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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.