PECB Updated ISO-IEC-27001-Lead-Implementer Exam Questions and Answers by yaqub

According to ISO/IEC 27001 : 2022 Lead Implementer, risk retention is one of the four risk treatment options that an organization can choose to deal with unacceptable risks. Risk retention means that the organization accepts the risk without taking any action to reduce its likelihood or impact. It applies to risks that are either too costly or impractical to address, or that have a low probability or impact. Therefore, an example of risk retention is when an organization decides to release the software even though some minor bugs have not been fixed yet. This implies that the organization has assessed the risk of releasing the software with bugs and has determined that it is acceptable, either because the bugs are not critical or because the cost of fixing them would outweigh the benefits.

According to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, clause 6.1.3, the Statement of Applicability (SoA) is a document that identifies the controls that are applicable to the organization’s ISMS and explains why they are selected or not. The SoA is based on the results of the risk assessment and risk treatment, which are the previous steps in the risk management process. Therefore, the justification for the exclusion of a control should be based on the risk assessment results and the risk treatment plan, and should reflect the purpose and objective of the control.

Control 5.18 of ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is about access rights to information and other associated assets, which should be provisioned, reviewed, modified and removed in accordance with the organization’s topic-specific policy on and rules for access control. The purpose of this control is to prevent unauthorized access to, modification of, and destruction of information assets. Therefore, the justification for the exclusion of this control should explain why the organization does not need to implement this control to protect its information assets from unauthorized access.

The justification given by the organization in the question is not acceptable, because it does not reflect the purpose of control 5.18. An access control reader at the main entrance of the building is a physical security measure, which is related to control 5.15 of ISO/IEC 27001:2022, not control 5.18. Control 5.18 is about logical access rights to information systems and services, which are not addressed by the access control reader. Therefore, the organization should either provide a valid justification for the exclusion of control 5.18, or include it in the SoA and implement it according to the risk assessment and risk treatment results.

Slower response times, downtime, and system saturation due to increased data flow and rapid expansion are categorized as technical failures. These issues directly relate to the limitations and breakdowns of IT systems (hardware, software, and communications infrastructure).

ISO/IEC 27005:2022 classifies such events as technical failures:

"Technical failures: Failures of IT systems, software, or infrastructure, including overload, saturation, or breakdowns, which affect the availability and performance of information systems."

— ISO/IEC 27005:2022, 8.2.2