Exam CISSP topic 1 question 392 discussion

A material weakness is a deficiency in internal control over financial reporting that could result in a significant misstatement of an entity’s financial statements. A regulatory agency overseeing the bank would want to review the documents that relate to the bank’s internal control over financial reporting and its ability to recover from the database failure. Based on the options given, the most relevant document for the regulatory agency to review is the Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which is a document that outlines how a business will continue operating during an unplanned disruption in service. The BCP would show how the bank prepared for and responded to the database failure, and what steps it took to restore normal operations and prevent further delays in financial deposits. The other documents are less relevant for the regulatory agency’s purpose, as they do not directly address the internal control over financial reporting or the recovery from the database failure. Therefore, the correct answer is A. Business Continuity Plan (BCP).

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) outlines the strategies, procedures, and resources needed to continue critical operations in the event of a disruption, such as a database failure. In this case, the bank's failure to meet service-level agreements (SLA) due to a TPS failure would be directly related to its ability to continue operations without interruptions. The BCP would include contingency plans and recovery procedures for systems like the transaction processing system, which would help determine if there were any weaknesses or failures in those plans.

Can't be A. BCP describes response and recovery procedures, but it does not directly assess impact or criticality. A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is the document that identifies critical systems (like the transaction processing system) and their dependencies.

BIA focuses on assessing the potential impacts of disruptions but doesn't provide the detailed response and recovery actions. BCP do.

A. While the BCP is essential for planning how to maintain and restore business operations during a disruption, it focuses on the response and recovery strategies rather than analyzing the impact of the failure itself. The BCP would be more relevant in reviewing the bank's response to the failure, not necessarily in determining if the cause was a material weakness. B. A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a key document that identifies the potential impacts of disruptions to business operations, including financial impacts, customer service disruptions, and regulatory compliance issues. It assesses the criticality of business processes and systems, like the Transaction Processing System (TPS) in this case, and helps to determine the potential consequences of a failure. Reviewing the BIA would allow the regulatory agency to understand the bank’s preparedness and the potential weaknesses in its ability to meet SLAs and maintain operations during a failure.

ChatGPT4.0 says, after telling that a database failure came into play: Given that the issue in question is a database failure, the MOST relevant document for the regulatory agency to review to determine if the failure indicates a material weakness is: A. Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Explanation: Business Continuity Plan (BCP): Purpose: The BCP outlines how an organization will respond to and recover from disruptions, including failures of critical systems such as databases. It includes procedures for maintaining operations and minimizing downtime in the event of system failures. Relevance: Reviewing the BCP helps the regulatory agency understand whether the bank had effective strategies in place to handle the database failure and how the failure was managed. It provides insight into whether the organization had plans and controls to mitigate the impact of such a failure.

the answer is A. A includes b and c

I think it's BIA because it says the agency is analyzing the "cause of the delay". BCP or COOP would not list out potential cause of delays

BIA - Along with determining the value of other assets, the BIA will also reveal the critical path of the organization; without knowing the critical path, it is impossible to properly plan BCDR efforts.

COOP means Continuity of Operations, is not a Plan

Answer A) BCP This document will give evidence that they had contingencies for failure events so that the auditing agency can verify that this event was planned for and what was done to get it back online as quick as possible. They may look at the plan and say that not enough was done to mitigate the downtime ...or say that everything that could have been done, was done. The BIA will only give insight as the financial affects from failures.

B. Business impact analysis (BIA) The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a key document that assesses the potential impact of disruptions, such as database failures or other incidents, on an organization's critical business processes. In this case, the BIA would provide insights into the criticality of the transaction processing system (TPS) and the financial deposit process, helping the regulatory agency determine if the delay in financial deposits resulted from a material weakness in the bank's operations.

B. The BIA evaluates and documents critical IT systems and processes along with the potential impacts resulting from their disruption. It would outline the recovery time objectives, dependencies, and risks associated specifically with the transaction processing system. The key reasons are: +The BIA specifically analyzes the potential impacts of a disruption to the transaction processing system based on its classification as a critical IT system. +It would provide details on the estimated downtime impacts, recovery time objective, and dependencies associated with an TPS failure. +These details would allow regulators to assess if the actual delay was adequately planned for or represented a material gap in the bank's continuity provisions for a mission critical system. The business continuity plan focuses on response/recovery, -while the COOP is for government agencies. -ERP relates to integrated software rather than business impact.

I think we should not over-complicate the question. The BIA shows the threats posed to the business critical processes. I think threats are quite synonym to material weakness. And although material is also a financial term, I don't think that is what CISSP intends to ask.

B is correct. BCP outlines the procedures and protocols to ensure that critical business operations can continue in the event of a disruption. While the BCP may be relevant in terms of how the bank responded to the incident, it may not provide the regulatory agency with the detailed information required to determine if the incident constitutes a material weakness. BIA is a process that identifies and evaluates the potential impacts of an interruption to critical business operations. In this case, the database failure of TPS resulted in delayed financial deposits which impacted the bank's ability to meet SLA with its customers.