ISC2 CC Business Continuity, DR & Incident Response Practice Question
During a disaster recovery exercise, the system fails to achieve the RTO. Analysis shows that restoring the database from tape takes 3 hours, but the RTO is 2 hours. Which is the most effective solution?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the misconception that improving backup speed (e.g., switching to disk or differential backups) is sufficient to meet RTO, when the real solution is to eliminate the restore process entirely with a high-availability replica.
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 a hot standby database replica
The RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is a business requirement that cannot be changed by simply adjusting the backup method. A hot standby database replica (e.g., using synchronous replication or Oracle Data Guard) provides near-instant failover, reducing recovery time to minutes, which directly meets the 2-hour RTO. This solution addresses the root cause—the restore process is too slow—by eliminating the need to restore from backup entirely.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use differential instead of full backups
Why it's wrong here
Differential backups still require restore time and may not reduce it enough.
- ✗
Switch from tape to disk-based backups
Why it's wrong here
Disk may improve speed but still requires restoring data, likely still >2 hours.
- ✓
Implement a hot standby database replica
Why this is correct
A hot replica is synchronized and can be activated immediately, meeting RTO.
- ✗
Increase the RTO to 3 hours
Why it's wrong here
Changing the requirement does not solve the underlying capability issue.
Visual reference
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Key term
Analysis
In incident response, analysis is the process of examining data and events to determine what happened, how it happened, and what actions to take.
Key term
Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery is a set of policies, procedures, and tools that help an organization restore critical IT systems and data after a disruptive event.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CC question from scratch — 976 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 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.