Which of the following is MOST important for an IS auditor to consider when evaluating a Software as a Service (SaaS) arrangement?
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A. B. C. D.D.
When evaluating a Software as a Service (SaaS) arrangement, an IS auditor should consider several factors. However, among the given options, the most important factor to consider is software availability (Option D).
Software availability refers to the availability of the software application in the SaaS environment. The software should be available at all times to ensure that the business operations relying on it are not affected. Any downtime or unavailability of the software can lead to significant business disruptions and loss of productivity, which can have a severe impact on the business.
Therefore, an IS auditor should ensure that the SaaS provider has robust systems and processes in place to guarantee the availability of the software. This includes having redundancy in place to ensure that the software can continue to function in case of a failure, having backup systems to restore data in case of data loss, and having disaster recovery plans to ensure that the software can be restored quickly in case of a disaster.
While the other options are also important, they are not as critical as software availability. The total cost of ownership (Option A) is an important consideration, but it should not be the primary focus. The frequency of software updates (Option B) is also important, but it is not as critical as software availability. Physical security (Option C) is also essential, but it is not as relevant to SaaS arrangements as it is to traditional IT environments where hardware and infrastructure are physically located on-premises.