CISA Practice Question: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience
An organization performs daily full backups of its critical database. The recovery time objective (RTO) is 4 hours. During a disaster, it takes 6 hours to restore the database. What is the most likely 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
✓
Recovery procedures are not tested against the RTO.
If the restore takes longer than the RTO, the backup and recovery process does not meet the required timeline. This could be due to inadequate infrastructure 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.
- ✗
Offsite storage location is too far.
Why it's wrong here
Distance affects retrieval time, but restore time is the primary issue.
- ✗
The backup type (full) is insufficient.
Why it's wrong here
Full backups are comprehensive; the issue is restore speed, not type.
- ✓
Recovery procedures are not tested against the RTO.
Why this is correct
Testing should validate that restore meets the RTO.
- ✗
Backup retention period is too short.
Why it's wrong here
Retention affects how long backups are kept, not restore speed.
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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.