easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
CISA Practice Question: A medium-sized retail company relies on an ERP…
A medium-sized retail company relies on an ERP system for order processing and inventory management. The system is hosted on-premises with daily backups stored on tape. The company's business continuity plan specifies an RTO of 4 hours and an RPO of 1 hour for the ERP system. During a recent fire drill, it was discovered that restoring the ERP system from tape took over 6 hours, and the most recent backup was from the previous day. Which of the following is the BEST course of action to meet the RTO and RPO goals?
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
✓
Implement a hot standby site with real-time replication.
A hot standby site with real-time replication can achieve an RPO near zero and an RTO within 4 hours, directly addressing both goals. Option A reduces the RPO but does not improve the restore time from tape, which exceeds the RTO. Option B increases the frequency of testing but does not change the recovery capability. Option D replaces tape with cloud backups, but weekly backups fail the 1-hour RPO, and restore time from the cloud may also be too long.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the frequency of tape backups to every 30 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
More frequent backups improve RPO but restore time remains too long.
- ✗
Conduct quarterly fire drills instead of annually.
Why it's wrong here
Testing frequency does not address the fundamental recovery time and data loss issues.
- ✓
Implement a hot standby site with real-time replication.
Why this is correct
Hot standby with replication meets both RTO and RPO requirements.
- ✗
Replace tape backups with weekly cloud backups.
Why it's wrong here
Weekly backups increase RPO to days, violating the 1-hour RPO.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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