CISA Practice Question: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience
An organization has a disaster recovery plan that includes a hot site. During a full interruption test, the recovery team discovers that the hot site's network configuration is incompatible with the production environment. What is the most likely root cause?
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
✓
The DR plan was not updated to reflect production changes.
The incompatibility suggests that the hot site was not properly configured to mirror production, possibly due to lack of change synchronization or testing.
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 backup data was not encrypted.
Why it's wrong here
Encryption of backup data protects confidentiality during storage and transfer; it has no bearing on whether the hot site's network topology matches production. Encryption is the right control when the risk is unauthorised disclosure of backed-up data, not configuration incompatibility.
- ✗
The test was not conducted during business hours.
Why it's wrong here
Business-hours timing affects user disruption and staffing, not whether the hot site's network addressing, routing or VLANs mirror production. Scheduling a full interruption test outside peak hours is correct when the goal is limiting operational impact while still validating recovery.
- ✓
The DR plan was not updated to reflect production changes.
Why this is correct
Production changes to network addressing, routing or topology were not reflected in the DR documentation, so the hot site was configured against an outdated baseline. Configuration drift between production and the plan causes such incompatibility during full interruption testing.
- ✗
The hot site is too far from the primary site.
Why it's wrong here
Geographic separation protects against a single regional disaster but does not determine whether addressing and routing schemes are compatible. Distance is the right consideration when the risk is a site-wide outage affecting both primary and recovery locations simultaneously.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISA practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISACA 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 CISA exam.