CISSP Security Operations Practice Question
An organization is designing its incident response team roles. Which role is primarily responsible for collecting and preserving evidence for legal proceedings?
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
✓
Forensic investigator
The forensic investigator is trained to handle evidence collection and preservation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Forensic investigator
Why this is correct
The forensic investigator is specifically tasked with the meticulous collection, preservation, and analysis of digital evidence from compromised systems. This role ensures that all evidence is handled according to strict chain-of-custody protocols and forensic best practices, making it admissible in legal proceedings and crucial for understanding the full scope and impact of an incident.
- ✗
Communications lead
Why it's wrong here
The communications lead is primarily responsible for managing all internal and external messaging during a security incident. This involves crafting official statements, coordinating with legal and public relations teams, and ensuring consistent, accurate information is disseminated to stakeholders and the public to protect the organization's reputation, a function distinct from technical evidence handling.
- ✗
Incident manager
Why it's wrong here
The incident manager orchestrates the overall incident response effort, coordinating all team activities, allocating resources, and making strategic decisions throughout the incident lifecycle. While they direct the response, their focus is on management and coordination rather than the specialized, hands-on technical task of forensically collecting and preserving digital evidence.
- ✗
Security analyst
Why it's wrong here
A security analyst typically performs real-time monitoring, initial alert triage, and preliminary investigation of security events to identify and escalate potential incidents. While they analyze data, their role is generally focused on immediate threat detection and initial assessment, lacking the specialized training, tools, and legal understanding required for rigorous, forensically sound evidence collection and preservation.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Incident Response and Business Continuity
Key term
Incident
An incident is a security event that violates an organization's policies or threatens its data, systems, or operations, requiring a structured response.
Key term
Incident response
Incident response is the structured approach an organization uses to identify, contain, and recover from cybersecurity incidents like data breaches or ransomware attacks.
About these practice questions
One of 747 original CISSP 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 CISSP 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 CISSP exam.