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 may be preserved, but loss of services is more urgent.
- ✗
Violation of chain of custody
Why it's wrong here
Chain of custody relates to evidence handling, not immediate service impact.
- ✗
Propagation of malware to other systems
Why it's wrong here
Isolation actually prevents propagation.
- ✓
Loss of authentication services
Why this is correct
Domain controllers provide authentication; isolating them disrupts network logins.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Authentication and Authorization Methods
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.
About these practice questions
This CC question is part of Courseiva's 976-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.