CISA Certified Information Systems Auditor – Question2793

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.

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

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.