CISA Question of the Day: Runbook Maintenance

Quiz Yazan Ibrahim

CISA exam practice question — CISA Question of the Day: Runbook Maintenance

CISA exam practice question: daily practice for the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam — domain: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience.

Question

During a recent production outage, the on-call team discovered that operational runbooks were inconsistent and several procedures were incorrect. Which control is most effective to ensure runbooks remain accurate and reliable for incident response?

  • A. Allow engineers to update runbooks informally after incidents without formal review
  • B. Rely solely on vendor-supplied documentation for operational procedures
  • C. Implement a formal runbook maintenance process with version control, scheduled reviews, change approvals, and periodic validation through drills
  • D. Document runbooks once and update them only following major incidents
Show the answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. Implement a formal runbook maintenance process with version control, scheduled reviews, change approvals, and periodic validation through drills

A formal maintenance process (version control, scheduled reviews, change approvals, and periodic validation through drills) ensures runbooks are current, auditable, and proven effective under realistic conditions. Version control provides traceability; scheduled reviews and change approvals ensure updates reflect approved changes; drills validate that procedures work in the environment. Informal updates lack governance and audit trails, increasing inconsistency and error risk. Relying only on vendor documentation ignores environment-specific configurations and local operational practices. Updating runbooks only after major incidents allows errors to persist and does not proactively reduce operational risk.

Want more practice?

Prepare for the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam with IT Department Audit: Risk, IT Control and Governance Evaluation.