Which controls are designed to discover control problems that were not prevented?

• A. Detective controls
• B. Preventative Controls
• C. Technical Controls
• D. Physical controls

Answer: (A)

Detective controls are the ones that uncover problems after they’ve occurred. They provide visibility into what happened, showing where controls didn’t stop an issue or where a breach slipped through. Think of them as the investigative layer: reviews of logs, audits, reconciliations, and monitoring that reveal irregularities or exceptions so you can remediate and strengthen defenses.

Preventive controls aim to stop incidents before they occur, so they aren’t primarily about finding issues once they’ve happened. Technical and physical controls describe the types of safeguards (technology-based or physical barriers) rather than the function of detection itself, so they aren’t focused on discovering problems after the fact. Detective controls, by contrast, are specifically designed to reveal those unprevented problems and trigger a response.