CISA Domain 4A-11 Practice Test 002

This practice test covers Domain 4 (Information Systems Operations & Business Resilience) Subdomain A-11 (Database Management) from the CISA exam content outline.

These questions are inspired by the ISACA CISA exam and are designed to help you test your knowledge of information systems auditing, governance, risk management, IT operations, business resilience, and information asset protection.

These are not official exam questions or brain dumps. They are original scenario-based questions created to reflect the audit judgment, control evaluation, and risk-based decision-making skills tested in the CISA exam.

Note: CISA and Certified Information Systems Auditor are registered trademarks of ISACA. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by ISACA.

To choose CISA practice tests based on specific domains and subdomains, click that link.

CISA 4A-11 Database Management Practice Test 002

10 questions • Single best answer

Question 1

An external IS auditor at a regional airline finds that the reservations database allows booking records to reference passenger IDs that no longer exist in the customer table. The application team explains that a nightly script identifies and deletes these orphaned records. Which control would BEST prevent this data integrity issue from occurring?

A. Increasing the frequency of the orphan-record cleanup script to hourly B. Implementing activity monitoring alerts on changes to the booking table C. Enforcing referential integrity constraints within the database schema D. Requiring supervisory review of the nightly cleanup script's output

Question 2

A regional health insurer has enabled native database auditing on its claims database to track privileged activity. The IS auditor learns that the database administrators, whose actions are the primary focus of the audit trail, can change audit settings and purge the audit log tables. Which recommendation is MOST appropriate?

A. Forward audit records in real time to a log repository the DBAs cannot modify B. Require DBAs to attest quarterly that they have not altered audit settings C. Extend the retention period for audit records stored within the database D. Have the lead DBA review audit configuration settings monthly for unauthorized changes

Question 3

During an audit of a payment card processor, an IS auditor finds that the development team refreshes its test database weekly with a full copy of production cardholder data. Access to the test database is limited to developers, and the environment resides on the internal corporate network. What is the auditor's BEST recommendation?

A. Restrict test database access to senior developers and team leads only B. Encrypt the network connection between test and production database servers C. Reduce the refresh frequency of the test database from weekly to monthly D. Mask or de-identify sensitive fields before loading data into test

Question 4

An IS auditor at a manufacturing company learns that finance analysts use a query tool with direct write access to the general ledger database to correct posting errors. The ERP application enforces approval workflows and edit checks for journal entries, but these direct database updates bypass them. Which finding is MOST significant?

A. The query tool has not been added to the approved software inventory B. Data changes bypass application-level authorization and edit controls C. Analysts lack formal training in the query language used for corrections D. Recurring posting errors point to weaknesses in upstream data entry

Question 5

A government pension agency's database team states that all production database servers receive vendor security patches within 30 days of release. The IS auditor needs to verify this claim across 60 database instances hosted in two data centers. Which of the following is the BEST evidence to support the auditor's conclusion?

A. The database team's written patching procedure and approval matrix B. System-generated reports of installed DBMS patch levels and dates C. Interviews with DBAs describing their most recent patch deployment cycle D. Change tickets showing patch deployment requests raised last quarter

Question 6

To improve reporting performance, a retail bank's data team denormalized several customer tables in its core banking database, duplicating address and account status fields across multiple tables. The IS auditor notes that no automated process exists to keep the duplicated fields synchronized. What is the PRIMARY risk the auditor should evaluate?

A. Increased storage consumption and higher database licensing costs B. Slower transaction processing when records are inserted or updated C. Inconsistent data across tables that undermines reporting reliability D. Greater difficulty restricting access to specific customer data fields

Question 7

An audit manager at a telecommunications provider is planning an audit of database management practices covering more than 200 database instances hosted both on premises and with a cloud provider. The audit budget allows six weeks of fieldwork for a team of three. What should the audit manager do FIRST?

A. Obtain a database inventory and rank instances by data sensitivity and criticality B. Run configuration benchmark scans against every database instance in scope C. Select a random statistical sample of instances for detailed control testing D. Interview database administrators to understand their daily operational tasks

Question 8

A logistics company relies on synchronous database replication to a secondary data center as the sole recovery mechanism for its order management database. Management states that replication eliminates the need for separate database backups because no transactions can be lost. Which conclusion is MOST appropriate for the IS auditor?

A. The approach is adequate because synchronous replication achieves zero data loss B. The approach is adequate provided that failover is tested at least annually C. The approach is inadequate because both sites run the same DBMS software version D. The approach is inadequate because logical corruption would replicate to the secondary

Question 9

An online education company encrypts its student records database using transparent data encryption to meet regulatory requirements. The IS auditor finds that the master encryption keys are stored on the same server as the database files and are administered solely by the database administrators. Which risk is MOST significant?

A. Query performance may degrade because of encryption processing overhead B. Encrypted backups may fail to restore correctly on alternate hardware C. A compromise of the server or DBA account would expose both keys and data D. Application users may lose access to records during scheduled key rotation

Question 10

While testing an inventory database at a pharmaceutical distributor, an IS auditor observes that two warehouse users updating the same stock record at the same moment can each save their changes, with the second update silently overwriting the first. System stock counts frequently disagree with physical inventory. Which control should the auditor recommend?

A. Daily reconciliation of system stock counts with physical inventory counts B. Record-locking or concurrency controls enforced by the database C. Restricting inventory updates to a single designated user per warehouse shift D. Transaction logs that capture before-and-after images of each updated record

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