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CISM Practice Question: A financial institution is designing an incident…
A financial institution is designing an incident response plan. They want to ensure that during a ransomware incident, critical transaction systems can be restored within 4 hours. Which metric should be used to measure this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse RTO (time to restore) with RPO (data loss tolerance), as both are recovery metrics but address different dimensions—candidates often pick RPO when the question mentions 'restore' without carefully noting the time constraint for restoration versus data age.
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 Time Objective (RTO)
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defines the maximum acceptable downtime after a disaster or incident, which directly aligns with the requirement to restore critical transaction systems within 4 hours. In incident management, RTO is the metric used to set the target for system recovery, ensuring business continuity. For ransomware incidents, RTO drives the restoration strategy and resource allocation to meet the 4-hour window.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Why it's wrong here
MTTR is an average, not a target recovery time.
- ✓
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Why this is correct
RTO defines the maximum acceptable downtime.
- ✗
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
Why it's wrong here
MTBF measures reliability, not recovery.
- ✗
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Why it's wrong here
RPO defines acceptable data loss, not downtime.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISM 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 CISM exam.