ISACA CISA Certified Information Systems Auditor Exam Questions and Answers – 5

The latest ISACA CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor) certification actual real practice exam question and answer (Q&A) dumps are available free, which are helpful for you to pass the ISACA CISA exam and earn ISACA CISA certification.

CISA Question 411

Question

Which of the following is MOST directly affected by network performance monitoring tools?

A. Integrity
B. Availability
C. Completeness
D. Confidentiality

Answer

B. Availability

Explanation

In case of a disruption in service, one of the key functions of network performance monitoring tools is to ensure that the information has remained unaltered. It is a function of security monitoring to assure confidentiality by using such tools as encryption. However, the most important aspect of network performance is assuring the ongoing dependence on connectivity to run the business. Therefore, the characteristic that benefits the most from network monitoring is availability.

CISA Question 412

Question

Which of the following types of firewalls provide the GREATEST degree and granularity of control?

A. Screening router
B. Packet filter
C. Application gateway
D. Circuit gateway

Answer

C. Application gateway

Explanation

The application gateway is similar to a circuit gateway, but it has specific proxies for each service. To handle web services, it has an HTTP proxy that acts as an intermediary between externals and internals, but is specifically for HTTP. This means that it not only checks the packet IP addresses (layer 3) and the ports it is directed to (in this case port 80, or layer 4), it also checks every HTTP command (layers 5 and 7).
Therefore, it works in a more detailed (granularity) way than the others. Screening router and packet filter (choices A and BJ work at the protocol, service and/or port level. This means that they analyze packets from layers 3 and 4, and not from higher levels. A circuit gateway (choice D) is based on a proxy or program that acts as an intermediary between external and internal accesses. This means that during an external access, instead of opening a single connection to the internal server, two connections are established-one from the external server to the proxy (which conforms the circuit-gateway) and one from the proxy to the internal server. Layers 3 and 4 (IP and TCP) and some general features from higher protocols are used to perform these tasks.

CISA Question 413

Question

Which of the following controls will MOST effectively detect the presence of bursts of errors in network transmissions?

A. Parity check
B. Echo check
C. Block sum check
D. Cyclic redundancy check

Answer

D. Cyclic redundancy check

Explanation

The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) can check for a block of transmitted data. The workstations generate the CRC and transmit it with the data.
The receiving workstation computes a CRC and compares it to the transmitted CRC. if both of them are equal. Then the block is assumed error free, in this case (such as in parity error or echo check), multiple errors can be detected. In general, CRC can detect all single-bit and bubble-bit errors. Parity check (known as vertical redundancy check) also involves adding a bit (known as the parity bit) to each character during transmission. In this case, where there is a presence of bursts of errors (i.e., impulsing noise during high transmission rates), it has a reliability of approximately 50 percent. Inhigher transmission rates, this limitation is significant.
Echo checks detect line errors by retransmitting data to the sending device for comparison with the original transmission.

CISA Question 414

Question

Which of the following is widely accepted as one of the critical components in networking management?

A. Configuration management
B. Topological mappings
C. Application of monitoring tools
D. Proxy server troubleshooting

Answer

A. Configuration management

Explanation

Configuration management is widely accepted as one of the key components of any network, since it establishes how the network will function internally and externally, it also deals with the management of configuration and monitoring performance. Topological mappings provide outlines of the components of the network and its connectivity. Application monitoring is not essential and proxy server troubleshooting is used for troubleshooting purposes.

CISA Question 415

Question

An IS auditor finds that, at certain times of the day, the data warehouse query performance decreases significantly. Which of the following controls would it be relevant for the IS auditor to review?

A. Permanent table-space allocation
B. Commitment and rollback controls
C. User spool and database limit controls
D. Read/write access log controls

Answer

C. User spool and database limit controls

Explanation

User spool limits restrict the space available for running user queries. This prevents poorly formed queries from consuming excessive system resources and impacting general query performance. Limiting the space available to users in their own databases prevents them from building excessively large tables. This helps to control space utilization which itself acts to help performance by maintaining a buffer between the actual data volume stored and the physical device capacity. Additionally, it prevents users from consuming excessive resources in ad hoc table builds (as opposed to scheduled production loads that often can run overnight and are optimized for performance purposes), in a data warehouse, since you are not running online transactions, commitment and rollback does not have an impact on performance. The other choices are not as likely to be the root cause of this performance issue.

CISA Question 416

Question

Which of the following database controls would ensure that the integrity of transactions is maintained in an online transaction processing system’s database?

A. Authentication controls
B. Data normalization controls
C. Read/write access log controls
D. Commitment and rollback controls

Answer

D. Commitment and rollback controls

Explanation

Commitment and rollback controls are directly relevant to integrity. These controls ensure that database operations that form a logical transaction unit will complete in its entirety or not at all; i.e., if, for some reason, a transaction cannot be fully completed, then incomplete inserts/updates/deletes are rolled back so that the database returns to its pretransaction state. All other choices would not address transaction integrity.

CISA Question 417

Question

An IS auditor finds that client requests were processed multiple times when received from different independent departmental databases, which are synchronized weekly. What would be the BEST recommendation?

A. increase the frequency for data replication between the different department systems to ensure timely updates.
B. Centralize all request processing in one department to avoid parallel processing of the same request.
C. Change the application architecture so that common data is held in just one shared database for all departments.
D. implement reconciliation controls to detect duplicates before orders are processed in the systems.

Answer

C. Change the application architecture so that common data is held in just one shared database for all departments.

Explanation

Keeping the data in one place is the best way to ensure that data are stored without redundancy and that all users have the same data on their systems. Although increasing the frequency may help to minimize the problem, the risk of duplication cannot be eliminated completely because parallel data entry is still possible.
Business requirements will most likely dictate where data processing activities are performed. Changing the business structure to solve an IT problem is not practical or politically feasible. Detective controls do not solve the problem of duplicate processing, and would require that an additional process be implemented to handle the discovered duplicates.

CISA Question 418

Question

A database administrator has detected a performance problem with some tables which could be solved through denormalization. This situation will increase the risk of:

A. concurrent access.
B. deadlocks.
C. unauthorized access to data.
D. a loss of data integrity.

Answer

D. a loss of data integrity.

Explanation

Normalization is the removal of redundant data elements from the database structure. Disabling normalization in relational databases will create redundancy and a risk of not maintaining consistency of data, with the consequent loss of data integrity. Deadlocks are not caused by denormalization. Access to data is controlled by defining user rights to information, and is not affected by denormalization.

CISA Question 419

Question

When performing a database review, an IS auditor notices that some tables in the database are not normalized. The IS auditor should next:

A. recommend that the database be normalized.
B. review the conceptual data model.
C. review the stored procedures.
D. review the justification.

Answer

D. review the justification.

Explanation

If the database is not normalized, the IS auditor should review the justification since, in some situations, denormalization is recommended for performance reasons. The IS auditor should not recommend normalizing the database until further investigation takes place. Reviewing the conceptual data model or the stored procedures will not provide information about normalization.

CISA Question 420

Question

In a relational database with referential integrity, the use of which of the following keys would prevent deletion of a row from a customer table as long as the customer number of that row is stored with live orders on the orders table?

A. Foreign key
B. Primary key
C. Secondary key
D. Public key

Answer

A. Foreign key

Explanation

In a relational database with referential integrity, the use of foreign keys would prevent events such as primary key changes and record deletions, resulting in orphaned relations within the database. It should not be possible to delete a row from a customer table when the customer number (primary key) of that row is stored with live orders on the orders table (the foreign key to the customer table). A primary key works in one table, so it is not able to provide/ensure referential integrity by itself. Secondary keys that are not foreign keys are not subject to referential integrity checks. Public key is related to encryption and not linked in any way to referential integrity.