ISC2 CC Practice Question: Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, and Incident Response
During a disaster, an organization activates a reciprocal agreement with another company. What is a primary risk associated with this strategy?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse the primary risk of a reciprocal agreement with the drawbacks of other DR strategies—candidates often pick 'high cost' (which actually describes hot sites) or 'long RTO' (which describes cold sites), missing that the unique weakness of reciprocity is simultaneous demand from both parties.
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
✓
Potential lack of capacity when both parties need resources simultaneously
A reciprocal agreement (also called a mutual aid pact) is a disaster recovery arrangement where two organizations agree to share each other's computing facilities in an emergency. The primary risk is that a disaster may affect both parties simultaneously—such as a regional event like a hurricane, earthquake, or widespread power outage—leaving neither with spare capacity to host the other's workloads. Because neither party maintains dedicated redundant resources for the other, resource contention during a shared crisis is the defining weakness of this strategy.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Potential lack of capacity when both parties need resources simultaneously
Why this is correct
Reciprocal agreements share another organisation's standby facilities, so simultaneous disasters create contention for the same equipment, workspace and processing capacity. This resource-contention risk is the primary weakness distinguishing reciprocal agreements from dedicated alternate sites or commercial hot sites.
- ✗
Long RTO due to data transfer
Why it's wrong here
Data transfer volume is not the defining weakness of a reciprocal agreement; bandwidth can be provisioned. The real exposure is that the partner's site may be affected by the same regional event or lack spare capacity, and testing is difficult because both parties must coordinate.
- ✗
High cost of maintaining duplicate infrastructure
Why it's wrong here
A reciprocal agreement shares existing capacity between two organisations, so neither maintains duplicate infrastructure; the arrangement typically reduces cost. The genuine risk is that the partner's systems may be unavailable or already committed during a widespread regional disaster, leaving no failover capacity.
- ✗
Incompatible hardware
Why it's wrong here
Hardware compatibility is not the primary risk; reciprocal agreements usually mandate compatible platforms as a precondition. The critical failure mode is that the partner may be unwilling or unable to honour the agreement during a real disaster, or may lack sufficient spare capacity.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Event
An event is any identifiable occurrence or action in a computer system, network, or application that can be logged, monitored, or analyzed for security or operational purposes.
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.
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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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