What weekly activity should be performed for critical files?

What weekly activity should be performed for critical files?

• A. No weekly checks
• B. Data backups
• C. Critical file comparisons
• D. System restarts

Answer: (C)

Detecting unauthorized changes to critical files is the key idea. The weekly activity that best achieves this is performing critical file comparisons to verify integrity. By comparing the current state of important files against a trusted baseline (using hashes or a file-integrity tool), you can detect tampering, malware, or unintended edits early and respond quickly. Backups matter for recoverability, but they don’t reveal modifications in real time; system restarts don’t provide a consistent check of integrity and could miss changes. Skipping weekly checks leaves a window where unauthorized modifications might go unnoticed. In practice, maintain secure baselines for critical files and run a weekly comparison, with alerts if any file differs from its baseline.

Detecting unauthorized changes to critical files is the key idea. The weekly activity that best achieves this is performing critical file comparisons to verify integrity. By comparing the current state of important files against a trusted baseline (using hashes or a file-integrity tool), you can detect tampering, malware, or unintended edits early and respond quickly. Backups matter for recoverability, but they don’t reveal modifications in real time; system restarts don’t provide a consistent check of integrity and could miss changes. Skipping weekly checks leaves a window where unauthorized modifications might go unnoticed. In practice, maintain secure baselines for critical files and run a weekly comparison, with alerts if any file differs from its baseline.