ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
Which of the following is the PRIMARY purpose of a business impact analysis (BIA)?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between a BIA (which identifies critical processes and their recovery priorities) and a risk assessment (which identifies threats and vulnerabilities), leading candidates to confuse the BIA's purpose with asset listing or cost analysis.
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
✓
Identify critical business processes and their recovery priorities
The primary purpose of a business impact analysis (BIA) is to identify critical business processes and quantify the impact of their disruption, which directly determines recovery priorities and objectives (RTO/RPO). This output drives the business continuity and disaster recovery strategy, not asset inventory or cost estimation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Determine the cost of implementing security controls
Why it's wrong here
Costing security controls is a risk-treatment and budgeting activity; a BIA establishes impact over time and derives recovery objectives instead. It is tempting because BIA findings do justify control spend, and costing controls would be correct when performing a cost-benefit analysis to select safeguards.
- ✗
List all IT assets
Why it's wrong here
Asset inventory is an input to the BIA, not its purpose; the BIA determines which functions are critical and the impact of their loss. It is tempting because you must know your assets before assessing impact, and listing assets would be correct during the asset identification phase of risk assessment.
- ✓
Identify critical business processes and their recovery priorities
Why this is correct
A BIA determines which business processes are most critical and sets their recovery priorities, typically through impact ratings over time. This directly satisfies the stem's focus on prioritisation, distinguishing it from risk assessment or purely technical recovery sequencing activities.
- ✗
Assign incident response roles
Why it's wrong here
A BIA identifies critical business functions and quantifies disruption impact, producing RTO and RPO figures; role assignment belongs to the incident response plan. It is tempting because BIA outputs do inform response planning, and assigning roles would be correct when building the incident response team structure itself.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Impact
Impact is the measure of the potential damage or harm that a risk event could cause to an organization's assets, operations, or reputation.
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.
About these practice questions
One of 989 original CC practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.