An IS auditor discovers a box of hard drives in a secured location that are overdue for physical destruction. The vendor responsible for this task was never made aware of these hard drives. Which of t

While a policy review might be a subsequent step if workflow issues point to policy deficiencies, the immediate problem is a process failure, so examining the workflow is a more targeted first action to diagnose the specific gap.

The issue stems from the vendor not being made aware of the hard drives, indicating a breakdown in the established process or workflow for asset disposal. Examining the workflow helps identify where the communication failed or which responsible party missed a step, allowing for a systemic fix to prevent future occurrences of improperly handled assets.

Recommending sending the drives to the vendor addresses the symptom, not the root cause of why they were not sent in the first place, and thus does not prevent recurrence of the issue.

Escalating to the asset owner is appropriate for remediation once the root cause (workflow gap) has been identified, but it is not the initial diagnostic step to understand *why* the process failed.