Chapter 4 of 5 · ISACA CISA
Operations and Business Resilience
IT components, assets, scheduling, interfaces, shadow IT, service management, logs, databases, continuity and recovery.
- 8topics
- 27 minfast track
- 4diagrams and exhibits
- 26%of the exam
Topics in this chapter
Take them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- 1IT Components and Asset ManagementHardware, software, network and cloud components for IS auditors, the IT asset inventory, CMDB, ownership, software licenses and…3 min
- 2Job Scheduling, Interfaces and End-User ComputingControls over job scheduling and automation, system interfaces and data transfers, and the risks of shadow IT and end-user…3 min
- 3Availability, Capacity and Service Level ManagementManaging availability and capacity, monitoring and trend analysis, service level and operational level agreements, and reporting…3 min
- 4Incident, Problem, Change and Patch ManagementIncident versus problem management, root cause analysis, change control and emergency changes, configuration baselines and patch…Diagram3 min
- 5Operational Log and Database ManagementCollecting, protecting, reviewing and retaining operational logs, time synchronization, database integrity, normalization and DBA…3 min
- 6Business Impact Analysis and Business Continuity PlanningBusiness impact analysis, dependencies, RTO, RPO and maximum tolerable outage, and building, maintaining and auditing the…Diagram4 min
- 7System Resilience and Data BackupFault tolerance, RAID, clustering and replication, and full, incremental and differential backups, rotation, off-site storage and…Diagram4 min
- 8Disaster Recovery Plans and TestingIT disaster recovery plans, alternate sites from mirrored to cold, reciprocal agreements, recovery teams and the types of…Diagram4 min
About this chapter
What this chapter covers
Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience is worth 26 percent of the CISA exam, one of the two largest domains. It covers how IT is run day to day and how the business keeps going, or recovers, when something serious goes wrong.
IS operations (4A) covers IT components, IT asset management, job scheduling and production process automation, system interfaces, shadow IT and end-user computing, availability and capacity management, problem and incident management, change, configuration and patch management, operational log management, service level management and database management. Business resilience (4B) covers the business impact analysis, system and operational resilience, data backup, storage and restoration, the business continuity plan and disaster recovery plans.
How the topics fit together
Good operations prevent most disruptions; resilience planning handles the rest. The business impact analysis is the bridge: it tells operations which systems matter most and how fast they must come back.
For resilience questions, the business impact analysis comes first. Recovery strategies, backup frequency and site choices all depend on the recovery objectives it sets.
How to use these pages
Each topic page has the same shape, so you can skim for what you need.
- What it is: the idea in plain words.
- How it works: the mechanism, with tables and examples.
- What to remember for the exam: the facts to memorise and how questions are phrased.
- Common mistakes: the classic traps.
- Check yourself: three questions to test your understanding.
Ready for more practice?
The full ISACA CISA question bank has 1,050 questions, with timed practice exams and an explanation for every answer.
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