IIBA Updated IIBA-CCA Exam Questions and Answers by rosabella

In NIST-style risk assessment,overall likelihoodis not a single guess; it is derived by considering two related likelihood components. First isthe likelihood that a threat event will be initiated. This reflects how probable it is that a threat actor or source will attempt the attack or that a threat event will occur, considering factors such as adversary capability, intent, targeting, opportunity, and environmental conditions. Second isthe likelihood that an initiated event will succeed, meaning the attempt results in the adverse outcome. This depends heavily on the organization’s existing protections and conditions, including control strength, system exposure, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, detection and response capability, and user behavior.

Option A matches this structure: analysts evaluate bothattack initiation likelihoodandinitiated attack success likelihoodto reach an overall view of likelihood. A high initiation likelihood with low success likelihood might occur when an organization is frequently targeted but has strong defenses. Conversely, low initiation likelihood with high success likelihood might apply to niche systems that are rarely targeted but poorly protected.

The other options are incomplete or misplaced. Risk impact is a separate dimension from likelihood, and mitigation strategy is an output of risk treatment, not an input to likelihood. Site traffic and commerce volume can influence exposure but do not define likelihood by themselves. Past experience and trends are useful evidence, but they support estimating the two likelihood components rather than replacing them.

KRIs and KPIs are only useful when they are handled as part of a disciplined measurement lifecycle. Cybersecurity governance guidance emphasizes three essential activities:collect,analyze, andreport. Organizations must firstcollectKRI and KPI data consistently from reliable sources such as vulnerability scanners, SIEM logs, IAM systems, ticketing platforms, and asset inventories. Collection requires defined metric owners, clear definitions, standardized time windows, and data quality checks so results are comparable across periods and business units.

Next, organizationsanalyzethe data to understand what it means for risk and performance. Analysis includes trending over time, comparing results to targets and thresholds, correlating indicators to business outcomes, identifying outliers, and determining root causes. For KRIs, analysis highlights rising exposure or control breakdowns such as increasing critical vulnerabilities beyond SLA. For KPIs, analysis evaluates operational effectiveness such as mean time to detect and mean time to remediate.

Finally, organizationsreportresults to the right audiences with the right level of detail. Reporting supports accountability by assigning actions, tracking remediation progress, and escalating when thresholds are exceeded. It also supports decision making by showing where investment, staffing, or control changes will have the greatest risk-reduction and performance impact. The other options are not standard, auditable metric management activities and do not reflect the established lifecycle used in cybersecurity measurement programs.

Opportunity cost is a core enterprise-risk and economics concept: when an organization allocates limited resources to one activity, it reduces what is available for other priorities. Increasing cybersecurity typically requiresmoney, skilled personnel time, executive attention, tooling, and operational capacity. Those resources could otherwise be used for revenue-generating work such as new product features, customer experience improvements, system modernization, market expansion, or process automation. That tradeoff is exactly what option D describes, making it the correct answer.

Cybersecurity documents stress that risk treatment decisions must balancerisk reductionagainstcost, feasibility, and business impact. While stronger security can reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents, it can also introduce friction (extra approval steps, stronger authentication, segmentation), slow delivery when changes require additional reviews, and demand ongoing operational effort (monitoring, patching, vulnerability remediation, access recertification, incident response testing). These impacts are not arguments against security; they are the reason governance processes prioritize controls based on the most critical assets, highest-risk threats, and compliance requirements.

Option A may be true in some cases, but it describes a direct cost, not the broader economic concept of opportunity cost. Option B is a trend statement and not the definition. Option C is incorrect because security spend is not always less than breach risk; organizations must evaluate cost-benefit and acceptable residual risk rather than assume a universal rule.

Multiple attempts by unauthorized users to access confidential data most closely aligns with activity from a hacker, meaning an unauthorized actor attempting to gain access to systems or information. Cybersecurity operations commonly observe this pattern as repeated login failures, password-spraying, credential-stuffing, brute-force attempts, repeated probing of restricted endpoints, or abnormal access requests against protected repositories. While “user” is too generic and could include authorized individuals, the question explicitly states “unauthorized users,” pointing to malicious or illegitimate actors. “Admin” and “IT Support” are roles typically associated with legitimate privileged access and operational troubleshooting; repeated unauthorized access attempts from those roles would be atypical and would still represent compromise or misuse rather than normal operations. Cybersecurity documentation often classifies these attempts as indicators of malicious intent and potential precursor events to a breach. Controls recommended to counter such activity include strong authentication (multi-factor authentication), account lockout and throttling policies, anomaly detection, IP reputation filtering, conditional access, least privilege, and monitoring of authentication logs for patterns across accounts and geographies. The key distinction is that repeated unauthorized attempts represent hostile behavior by an external or rogue actor, which is best described as a hacker in the provided options.