SK0-005 security-disaster-recovery Practice Question
An organization's disaster recovery plan specifies an RPO of 4 hours. Their current backup schedule performs a full backup at midnight and incremental backups every 2 hours from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. A server failure occurs at 3:00 AM, and data created after 8:00 PM the previous day is permanently lost. Which of the following is the MOST likely reason?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
There is a gap in the backup schedule overnight that exceeds the RPO.
Option C is correct because the backup schedule has no coverage from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM the next morning (except full at midnight), creating a 12-hour gap overnight that exceeds the 4-hour RPO. Data created after 8:00 PM and before the failure at 3:00 AM is lost because no backup captured it. Option A is incorrect because RPO is a requirement, not the cause. Option B is speculative. Option D refers to synthetic fulls, which are not relevant to this gap.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The incremental backups were not synthetically rolled into the full backup.
Why it's wrong here
Synthetic full backups are a method to consolidate incrementals but are unrelated to the scheduling gap that caused the data loss.
- ✗
The RPO was set too low for the business requirements.
Why it's wrong here
RPO is the target, not the cause; the issue is that the backup schedule does not meet the specified RPO.
- ✓
There is a gap in the backup schedule overnight that exceeds the RPO.
Why this is correct
The schedule only covers 8:00 AM–8:00 PM with incrementals, leaving a long interval overnight where no backups capture data changes, violating the 4-hour RPO.
- ✗
The backup media became corrupted.
Why it's wrong here
There is no evidence of media corruption; the problem is the missing backups during the overnight period.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Server Maintenance: Patches, Monitoring, and Backups
Key term
Business Continuity Planning
Business Continuity Planning is the process of creating a strategy to keep an organization's essential functions running during and after a major disruption.
Key term
Recovery
Recovery is the process of restoring systems, data, and operations after a security incident, failure, or disaster to return to normal functioning.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed July 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
This SK0-005 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SK0-005 exam.