ISC2 CC Practice Question: Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, and Incident Response
Which recovery site strategy provides the fastest Recovery Time Objective (RTO), typically within hours, by maintaining a fully operational mirrored environment?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is conflating 'cloud-based recovery' with a hot site — candidates assume anything cloud is automatically fastest, but the exam wants the classic hot/warm/cold classification where 'fully operational mirrored environment' maps specifically to hot site.
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
A hot site is a fully operational duplicate of the primary data center with mirrored hardware, data replication, and network connectivity, enabling failover typically within minutes to hours. Because it maintains real-time or near-real-time synchronization, it delivers the fastest Recovery Time Objective (RTO) among the traditional site strategies. This makes it the correct choice when the business cannot tolerate extended downtime.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cold site
Why it's wrong here
A cold site provides only basic facilities with no pre-installed systems or replicated data, so recovery requires provisioning and restoring from backup, far exceeding the hours-scale RTO. It is tempting as the cheapest option, and would be correct where downtime of weeks is acceptable.
- ✗
Warm site
Why it's wrong here
A warm site keeps hardware and data replicated but requires restoration and configuration before workloads run, so recovery takes longer than the mirrored environment the stem demands. It is tempting because warm sites balance cost against RTO, and would suit scenarios tolerating days rather than hours.
- ✓
Hot site
Why this is correct
A hot site maintains a fully operational, mirrored environment with current data and ready hardware, enabling failover within hours. This satisfies the stem's fastest-RTO constraint, unlike warm or cold sites, which require longer setup and data restoration.
- ✗
Cloud-based recovery
Why it's wrong here
Cloud-based recovery rebuilds infrastructure on demand from backups or templates, so provisioning and data restoration delay service, failing the mirrored-environment requirement. It is tempting because cloud elasticity can reduce cost, and would suit organisations wanting scalable DR without owning a standby data centre.
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
Failover
Failover is the automatic switching to a backup system when the primary system fails, ensuring continuous operation and minimal downtime.
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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
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.