N10-009 Question 188
Single answer3.1 Explain the purpose of organizational processes and procedures.A network administrator needs to upgrade firmware on several core switches during a planned maintenance window. The environment supports a 24/7 customer-facing application, and a recent unauthorized change caused an outage. Before making the upgrade, the administrator is told to follow the organization's formal process to reduce risk, ensure stakeholder awareness, and provide a rollback path if the upgrade fails. Which organizational process should the administrator follow FIRST?
- A
Submit a change request through the organization's change management process
- B
Escalate the task to the incident response team so they can monitor the upgrade
- C
Update the asset inventory with the new firmware version before the work begins
- D
Review the acceptable use policy to confirm firmware upgrades are permitted
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best answer is to submit a change request through the organization's change management process. For Network+ objectives covering organizational processes and procedures, change management is a key concept because it helps prevent outages caused by unauthorized or poorly coordinated modifications. In practice, mature change management includes documenting the purpose of the change, scope, risk assessment, implementation steps, testing, communication to stakeholders, approvals, scheduled maintenance windows, and rollback/backout plans. These controls align with widely recognized IT service management and security best practices, such as formal change-control procedures described in operational frameworks and security guidance. In contrast, incident response addresses active incidents, asset management tracks hardware and software details, and acceptable use policies govern end-user behavior rather than planned network changes.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Change management is the formal organizational process used to review, approve, schedule, document, communicate, and back out planned changes. In this scenario, the administrator needs risk reduction, stakeholder awareness, and a rollback plan, which are core goals of change management. A proper change request typically includes the implementation plan, maintenance window, affected systems, testing steps, approval, and backout procedures.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Incident response is used to detect, contain, investigate, and recover from security incidents or other active events. Monitoring during a maintenance window may be useful, but incident response is not the first organizational process for approving and coordinating a planned firmware upgrade. Choosing this reflects the misconception that any potentially disruptive activity should start as an incident rather than as a controlled change.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Updating the asset inventory is important for documentation and lifecycle tracking, but it should occur as part of or after the approved change process, not before the work begins. Recording a version that has not yet been installed would also create inaccurate documentation. This option is plausible because inventory management is a valid organizational process, but it does not address approval, communication, or rollback planning.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. An acceptable use policy defines how users may appropriately use organizational systems and resources. It is not the primary process for authorizing operational infrastructure changes. Someone might select this if they confuse user behavior policies with operational change-control procedures, but firmware upgrades are governed by change management, maintenance procedures, and related operational standards.