hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
Best Approach for Managing Risk When a Critical Application Cannot Be Patched Immediately
During an internal audit, an organization discovers that a critical application has not been patched for six months. The application is business-critical and cannot be taken offline during business hours. Which of the following is the best course of action?
Quick Answer
The best course of action is to implement compensating controls and schedule patching at the next available maintenance window. This approach directly addresses risk management for unpatched critical applications by deploying layered defenses—such as network segmentation, web application firewall rules, or host-based intrusion prevention—to reduce the immediate threat exposure while the application remains online. On the CISSP exam, this scenario tests your grasp of risk treatment and the principle of balancing security with business continuity, a core domain of the Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification. A common trap is to choose an option that either takes the application offline immediately or ignores the risk entirely; the correct path always prioritizes operational uptime through temporary safeguards. Remember the mnemonic “Patch Later, Protect Now” to recall that compensating controls buy time for a scheduled, tested patch deployment.
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose immediate patching (Option C) thinking it is the most secure action, but the CISSP exam emphasizes balancing security with business continuity and following proper change management procedures.
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
✓
Implement compensating controls and schedule patching at the next available maintenance window
Compensating controls (e.g., network segmentation, WAF rules, or host-based IPS) reduce the immediate risk while the critical application remains online. Scheduling patching for the next maintenance window aligns with change management and ensures the patch is tested and applied without disrupting business operations. This balances security needs with operational continuity, a core principle of risk management.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Implement compensating controls and schedule patching at the next available maintenance window
Why this is correct
Compensating controls mitigate risk until the patch can be applied safely during a planned outage.
- ✗
Accept the risk and continue operations
Why it's wrong here
Accepting risk without mitigation is not appropriate for a critical vulnerability.
- ✗
Apply the patch immediately during off-hours even if it risks downtime
Why it's wrong here
This may cause unplanned downtime if the patch fails, and off-hours may not be sufficient.
- ✗
Disconnect the application until it is patched
Why it's wrong here
Disconnecting a business-critical application would cause significant operational impact.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Security Governance and Principles
Key term
Risk management
Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and controlling threats to an organization's capital, earnings, and operations, including IT systems and data.
Key term
Security
Security in IT is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, damage, or theft.
About these practice questions
This CISSP question is part of Courseiva's 747-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 →
Same concept, more angles
2 more ways this is tested on CISSP
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A security analyst notes that a recent penetration test successfully exploited a vulnerability in a legacy application that cannot be patched. The analyst recommends implementing network segmentation to limit the application's exposure. This recommendation is an example of:
hard- ✓ A.Risk mitigation
- B.Risk acceptance
- C.Risk avoidance
- D.Risk transfer
Why A: Implementing network segmentation to limit exposure of an unpatched legacy application is a classic example of risk mitigation. By isolating the application on a separate network segment (e.g., using VLANs or firewall rules), the analyst reduces the likelihood or impact of a successful exploit, even though the underlying vulnerability remains unpatched. This directly aligns with the CISSP definition of risk mitigation: applying controls to reduce risk to an acceptable level.
Variation 2. A company's security team discovers that a critical web application has a SQL injection vulnerability. However, the team is unable to remediate it immediately due to a dependency on a third-party component. Which of the following is the BEST approach to manage the risk while awaiting a patch?
hard- A.Accept the risk and implement compensating controls like input validation at the network layer
- ✓ B.Deploy a web application firewall with a rule to block SQL injection patterns
- C.Increase logging and monitoring of the application
- D.Disable the vulnerable feature entirely
Why B: When a vulnerability in a third-party component cannot be patched immediately, the best approach is to mitigate the risk using compensating controls. Deploying a Web Application Firewall (WAF) with rules to detect and block SQL injection patterns is the classic compensating control for this scenario, protecting the application at the application layer (Layer 7) without modifying the underlying code.
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.