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CISA—Certified Information Systems Auditor - Part 212

Mary Smith

Sat, 18 Apr 2026

CISA—Certified Information Systems Auditor - Part 212

1. Which of the following does a lack of adequate security controls represent?

A) Threat
B) Asset
C) Impact
D) Vulnerability



2. Assessing IT risks is BEST achieved by:

A) evaluating threats associated with existing IT assets and IT projects.
B) using the firm's past actual loss experience to determine current exposure.
C) reviewing published loss statistics from comparable organizations.
D) reviewing IT control weaknesses identified in audit reports.



3. Which of the following terms refers to systems designed to detect and prevent the unauthorized transmission of information from the computer systems of an organization to outsiders?

A) ILD&P
B) ICT&P
C) ILP&C
D) ILR&D
E) None of the choices.


4. To address the risk of operations staff's failure to perform the daily backup, management requires that the systems administrator sign off on the daily backup. This is an example of risk:

A) avoidance
B) transference
C) mitigation
D) acceptance



5. A poor choice of passwords and transmission over unprotected communications lines are examples of:

A) vulnerabilities.
B) threats.
C) probabilities.
D) impacts.



1. Right Answer: D
Explanation: The lack of adequate security controls represents a vulnerability, exposing sensitive information and data to the risk of malicious damage, attack or unauthorized access by hackers. This could result in a loss of sensitive information and lead to the loss of goodwill for the organization. A succinct definition of risk is provided by the Guidelines for the Management of IT Security published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines risk as the 'potential that a given threat will exploit the vulnerability of an asset or group of assets to cause loss or damage to the assets.' The various elements of the definition are vulnerability, threat, asset and impact. Lack of adequate security functionality in this context is a vulnerability.

2. Right Answer: A
Explanation: To assess IT risks, threats and vulnerabilities need to be evaluated using qualitative or quantitative risk assessment approaches. Choices B, C and D are potentially useful inputs to the risk assessment process, but by themselves are not sufficient. Basing an assessment on past losses will not adequately reflect inevitable changes to the firm's IT assets, projects, controls and strategic environment. There are also likely to be problems with the scope and quality of the loss data available to be assessed. Comparable organizations will have differences in their IT assets, control environment and strategic circumstances. Therefore, their loss experience cannot be used to directly assess organizational IT risk. Control weaknesses identified during audits will be relevant in assessing threat exposure and further analysis may be needed to assess threat probability. Depending on the scope of the audit coverage, it is possible that not all of the critical IT assets and projects will have recently been audited, and there may not be a sufficient assessment of strategic IT risks.

3. Right Answer: A
Explanation: Information Leakage Detection and Prevention (ILD&P) is a computer security term referring to systems designed to detect and prevent the unauthorized transmission of information from the computer systems of an organization to outsiders. Network ILD&P are gateway-based systems installed on the organization's internet network connection and analyze network traffic to search for unauthorized information transmissions. Host Based ILD&P systems run on end-user workstations to monitor and control access to physical devices and access information before it has been encrypted.

4. Right Answer: C
Explanation: Mitigation is the strategy that provides for the definition and implementation of controls to address the risk described. Avoidance is a strategy that provides for not implementing certain activities or processes that would incur risk. Transference is the strategy that provides for sharing risk with partners or taking insurance coverage. Acceptance is a strategy that provides for formal acknowledgement of the existence of a risk and the monitoring of that risk.

5. Right Answer: A
Explanation: Vulnerabilities represent characteristics of information resources that may be exploited by a threat. Threats are circumstances or events with the potential to cause harm to information resources. Probabilities represent the likelihood of the occurrence of a threat, while impacts represent the outcome or result of a threat exploiting a vulnerability.

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