ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
A company's primary data center is located in a region prone to hurricanes. The IT team is designing a disaster recovery plan to ensure critical applications resume within 4 hours of a declared disaster. Which of the following is the MOST appropriate recovery strategy?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between RTO and RPO, and the trap here is that candidates may choose a warm site (Option D) because its RTO of 6 hours seems close to 4 hours, but they overlook that the RTO must be strictly less than or equal to the requirement, and synchronous replication at a hot site is the only option that meets both the 4-hour RTO and near-zero RPO for critical applications.
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
✓
Hot site with synchronous replication (RTO 1 hour, RPO near zero)
A hot site with synchronous replication is the most appropriate strategy because it provides an RTO of 1 hour (well within the 4-hour requirement) and an RPO near zero, ensuring critical applications resume quickly with minimal data loss. Synchronous replication writes data to both primary and replica storage simultaneously, so in a hurricane scenario, the hot site is fully operational and ready to take over immediately.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Hot site with synchronous replication (RTO 1 hour, RPO near zero)
Why this is correct
Meets RTO and RPO requirements.
- ✗
Colocation with tape backups shipped offsite (RTO 24 hours, RPO 24 hours)
Why it's wrong here
RTO of 24 hours exceeds 4-hour requirement.
- ✗
Cold site with weekly full backups (RTO 48 hours, RPO 7 days)
Why it's wrong here
RTO and RPO far exceed limits.
- ✗
Warm site with daily incremental backups (RTO 6 hours, RPO 4 hours)
Why it's wrong here
RTO of 6 hours exceeds the required 4 hours.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
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.
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.
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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.