ISC2 CC Practice Question: Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, and Incident Response
An organization's recovery time objective (RTO) for its customer database is 4 hours, and the recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour. The database is backed up every hour using full backups. A disaster occurs at 2:00 PM, and the last successful backup was at 1:00 PM. The system is restored and operational at 5:30 PM, but data from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM is lost. Which statement is correct?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is treating 'exactly at the limit' as a failure — candidates often mark the RPO as exceeded when data loss equals (rather than exceeds) the stated RPO.
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
✓
Both the RTO and RPO were met.
The RTO is 4 hours and the system was restored at 5:30 PM after a 2:00 PM disaster — a 3.5-hour recovery, which is within the 4-hour RTO. The RPO is 1 hour and the last backup was at 1:00 PM, so up to 1 hour of data (1:00–2:00 PM) was lost, which is exactly at the 1-hour RPO limit and therefore met. Both objectives were satisfied.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Both the RTO and RPO were met.
Why this is correct
Restoration finished at 5:30 PM, 3.5 hours after the 2:00 PM disaster, inside the 4-hour RTO. The last backup at 1:00 PM means only one hour of data was lost, matching the 1-hour RPO, so both targets were satisfied.
- ✗
The RTO was met, but the RPO was exceeded.
Why it's wrong here
Restoring at 5:30 PM against a 2:00 PM disaster gives a 3.5-hour recovery, inside the 4-hour RTO, so the RTO was met. However, the one-hour gap of lost data equals the 1-hour RPO exactly, meaning the RPO was satisfied, not exceeded. This option tempts those who misread "met" as "exceeded".
- ✗
The RTO was exceeded, but the RPO was met.
Why it's wrong here
RTO was not exceeded; it was met.
- ✗
Both the RTO and RPO were exceeded.
Why it's wrong here
Restoring at 5:30 PM gives a three-and-a-half-hour recovery, inside the four-hour RTO, so the RTO was met; only the one-hour RPO was exceeded, since an hour of data was lost. It tempts because a full hour of lost data feels like a double breach, yet RTO measures downtime, not data loss.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Organization
An Organization is a top-level container in Google Cloud that represents your company or entities and serves as the root node for all your cloud resources, policies, and access control.
Key term
RTO
Recovery Time Objective is the maximum acceptable time to restore a system or data after a disaster, defining how quickly normal operations must resume.
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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
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