ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
An organization's BCP identifies a customer-facing order system as critical. The BIA shows the business can tolerate 12 hours of downtime and 1 hour of data loss. The current architecture uses nightly full backups to tape with a 10-hour restore time. Which change BEST closes the gap between current capability and the stated requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating backup frequency as a fix for recovery time, when backup frequency primarily governs the recovery point objective and does not by itself speed up restoration.
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
✓
Implement continuous replication to a secondary site with automated failover to meet the 12-hour RTO and 1-hour RPO
The stated requirements are a 12-hour RTO and a 1-hour RPO. Nightly tape backups with a 10-hour restore already meet the RTO but leave up to 24 hours of potential data loss, violating the RPO. Continuous replication to a secondary site with automated failover reduces data loss to minutes and restores service quickly, satisfying both the recovery point and recovery time objectives in one architectural change.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Implement continuous replication to a secondary site with automated failover to meet the 12-hour RTO and 1-hour RPO
Why this is correct
Continuous replication addresses the RPO by keeping data loss well under one hour, and automated failover at a secondary site brings the order system back online far faster than a 10-hour tape restore, comfortably meeting the 12-hour RTO. This solution targets both metrics simultaneously and provides a resilient architecture rather than incremental tweaks to a slow tape process.
- ✗
Document a manual workaround in the BCP that allows order entry staff to record transactions on paper until systems return
Why it's wrong here
Manual workarounds can support business continuity for short outages, but they do not restore the order system itself and introduce transcription errors, delays, and reconciliation problems. With a 1-hour RPO, paper records captured over many hours create significant data inconsistency and rework. This option addresses neither the RTO for system restoration nor the data-loss tolerance in a reliable way.
- ✗
Increase backup frequency to every hour while keeping the nightly tape full backup and 10-hour restore process
Why it's wrong here
More frequent backups improve the recovery point objective by reducing data loss to about an hour, but they do nothing for the recovery time objective. The 10-hour restore time still fits within the 12-hour RTO, so the RPO gap is addressed, yet this option leaves the restore method unchanged and does not improve overall resilience. It only partially meets requirements and ignores the more robust replication approach.
- ✗
Move backups from tape to disk to reduce restore time, keeping the nightly full backup schedule
Why it's wrong here
Disk-based backup can shorten restore time significantly compared with tape, but with only nightly backups the potential data loss remains up to 24 hours, which violates the 1-hour RPO. This option improves one aspect of recovery performance while leaving the data-loss exposure far outside the stated tolerance, so it does not satisfy the full set of requirements.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
RPO
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, defining how recent data must be to resume operations after a disruption.
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.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CC question from scratch — 989 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official ISC2 exam blueprint
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.