Does your change management process minimally include authorization, impact analysis, testing, and validation before moving changes to production?

This question is asking about your organization's change management process, which is the structured approach to making changes to your IT systems, applications, or infrastructure. Specifically, it's asking if your process includes at least four critical elements: 1. Authorization: Getting proper approval from designated stakeholders before implementing changes 2. Impact analysis: Evaluating how the change might affect other systems, users, or business processes 3. Testing: Verifying that the change works as intended in a non-production environment 4. Validation: Confirming that the change meets requirements and doesn't introduce new issues after implementation This question is important in a security assessment because poor change management is a common source of security vulnerabilities and system outages. Unauthorized or untested changes can introduce security flaws, break existing functionality, or cause unexpected downtime. A robust change management process helps prevent these issues by ensuring changes are properly vetted before they reach production environments. To best answer this question, you should describe your formal change management process, highlighting how it incorporates all four required elements. Include information about your change approval board (if you have one), documentation requirements, testing procedures, and post-implementation verification. If you use specific tools or frameworks (like ITIL) to manage changes, mention those as well. Be specific about who authorizes changes, how impact is assessed, what testing environments you use, and how you validate changes after deployment.