ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
A company has a disaster recovery plan that includes a hot site. Which of the following is the PRIMARY advantage of a hot site over a cold site?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction that a hot site's primary benefit is speed of recovery (RTO), not cost or security, and candidates mistakenly choose 'lower cost' because they confuse hot sites with warm sites or assume all DR sites are expensive.
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
✓
Faster recovery time
A hot site is a fully operational duplicate of the primary data center, complete with live servers, storage, networking, and synchronized data. This eliminates the need to procure and configure hardware after a disaster, enabling recovery in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. The primary advantage is therefore a significantly faster recovery time objective (RTO) compared to a cold site, which has no pre-installed equipment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Easier maintenance
Why it's wrong here
Both require maintenance; complexity is similar.
- ✓
Faster recovery time
Why this is correct
Hot sites are fully configured and ready, enabling rapid failover.
- ✗
Greater security
Why it's wrong here
Security is not inherently better; it depends on implementation.
- ✗
Lower cost
Why it's wrong here
Hot sites are more expensive due to ongoing provisioned hardware and connectivity.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Recovery
Recovery is the process of restoring systems, data, and operations after a security incident, failure, or disaster to return to normal functioning.
Key term
Business Continuity Planning
Business Continuity Planning is the process of creating a strategy to keep an organization's essential functions running during and after a major disruption.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CC practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CC exam.