CISA Practice Question: Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience
An organization's backup strategy includes full backups every Sunday and incremental backups on other days. On Wednesday, a failure occurs. Which backups are needed to restore the data?
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
✓
Sunday's full backup and Monday through Wednesday incremental backups
To restore from incremental backups, you need the last full backup (Sunday) and all incremental backups from Monday through Wednesday.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Sunday's full backup only
Why it's wrong here
Sunday's full backup restores data only to Sunday; every change made Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is lost. It is tempting because the full backup is self-contained and always restorable, and it would be correct if no incremental backups had run since Sunday.
- ✗
Sunday's full backup and Wednesday's incremental backup
Why it's wrong here
Incrementals capture only changes since the previous backup, so Wednesday's file holds just Tuesday-to-Wednesday deltas; restoring requires Sunday's full plus Monday's, Tuesday's and Wednesday's incrementals in sequence. It is tempting because pairing a full with the latest incremental feels sufficient, and that pairing would be correct for differential backups.
- ✗
Wednesday's incremental backup only
Why it's wrong here
Wednesday's incremental contains only changes since Tuesday's backup, so restoring it alone leaves all earlier data absent. It is tempting because the incremental is the most recent backup and appears to hold the current state, and it would be correct only if the strategy used full backups daily.
- ✓
Sunday's full backup and Monday through Wednesday incremental backups
Why this is correct
Incremental backups capture only changes since the previous backup, so restoration requires the last full backup plus every incremental in sequence. Sunday's full plus Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday incrementals satisfies the stem's Wednesday failure scenario.
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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.