Terminology Question???

niall.nf

I just got this question wrong in a practice exam I took and after going back to review the material I still would pick what I originally picked!!

Can someone please explain the correct answer to me?

Management establishes a policy that requires that all information technology professionals must have a college degree with a core emphasis on information technology, and that all system administrators must have a security certification from an accredited program. By doing so, management has established what?

A - a standard
B - a guideline
C - a baseline
D - a regulation

vasyvasy

I'm thinking the right answer would be a) standard

Asif Dasl

I am going to say a regulation, as the degrees are a requirement that is enforced.

My 2 cents.

atx1975

I am also going with a) standard as a regulation usually implies a governing body that "regulates" or enforces that.

da_vato

A standard because you establish a standard that everyone will follow and then you create a policy to make it enforceable.

guidelines are more like suggestions

baseline is a minimum achievable standard (could be this but baselines are more geared towards configurations).

Regulation is usually dictated from a governing source ( like the government saying "x corp" must abide by HIPAA)

ash.mur

For the above question (without changing anything) , undoubtedly it is Standard, bcoz the management is setting up standards to recuirt people. now having said that , if in the question , if there would have been a word "Atleast Security certification from accredited program" then it would have been a baseline, bcoz that represents the minimum requirement what managemetn is expecting from candidate.

Hope this make sense.

niall.nf

I chose a standard as the answer which apparently was wrong.

The correct answer according the the source is a baseline.

But I cant see why its not a standard!!!

BGraves

This is easily one of those pain in the ass questions that is typical of ISC2.

Perhaps thinking of it in the following way will help?

From the perspective of a manager, their IT staff should have a "minimum requirement" (or if you think of people as machines, a minimum configuration) of an BS IT degree and/or a Security certification.

Meaning that moving forward, every IT staff member will have this "required configuration".
And
No IT staff without this configuration will be used, only IT staff with this configuration will be used.


For example, the following ISC2 page uses the word baseline similarly.
https://www.isc2.org/dodmandate/Default.aspx

netstat

Standards can be seen as something Mandatory. You either comply with it or you do not. Nothing more, nothing less - everything has to be uniform.

Baseline is the minimum level of something as per that point in time. You can have more, but not less.

Regulations are (possibly mandatory) instructions usually dictated from a higher sources as already mentioned earlier.

Guidelines are recommendations which you do not have to comply with.

da_vato

In the actual test you will find that you will need to use deductive reasoning. Almost always you will be able to get rid of two answers right off the bat. Then you will have to evaluate the remaining two over and over and probably over again. Don't let this question upset you too bad as you can see some of us who already posses the cert would have answered along with you.

netstat gave an excellent perspective on this that I wasn't even thinking about, more broad.

niall.nf

Thanks guys

Exam in 3 days...starting to second guess everything now and getting nervous

kalkan999

Yea, Gotta think of baseline in terms of IT degree as the baseline, and everything else is a nice to have. Don't confuse Baseline with Core if used in a different context. It's all about context with this test. Baseline was my first answer when I looked at your question, but then started second-guessing myself when I saw the answers of my colleagues. Happens to us all, my friend. Good luck on the exam.