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CCSP Practice Question: A company has a disaster recovery (DR) plan that…
A company has a disaster recovery (DR) plan that includes failing over to a secondary cloud region. The plan was tested six months ago and worked, but since then significant infrastructure changes have been made. Which of the following should the company do to ensure the DR plan remains effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
CCSP often tests the balance between documentation and testing; candidates may choose to simply update documentation or wait for the next scheduled test, but the correct answer emphasizes immediate validation through exercises and partial tests.
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
✓
Conduct a tabletop exercise now, followed by a partial failover test of critical applications.
After significant infrastructure changes, the DR plan may no longer be valid. A tabletop exercise quickly identifies gaps in the plan and updates documentation, while a partial failover test of critical applications validates that the changes work in practice without the risk of a full-scale failover. This combined approach ensures the plan remains effective and current.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Wait until the next annual DR test to verify the changes.
Why it's wrong here
Deferring verification leaves the plan unproven against six months of infrastructure change, so any latent dependency breakage stays hidden until a real disaster. Waiting for a scheduled annual test suits stable environments with minimal change; here the significant changes demand immediate re-testing.
- ✗
Automate the entire failover process to eliminate human error.
Why it's wrong here
Automation cannot validate that the changed infrastructure still fails over correctly; it only removes manual steps from a process whose accuracy is unverified. Automation suits mature, repeatedly exercised runbooks. Here the untested changes themselves must be re-validated through a failover test first.
- ✗
Update the DR documentation to reflect the changes and assume the plan still works.
Why it's wrong here
Documentation updates record intent, not behaviour; they cannot confirm the secondary region still provisions the altered infrastructure or that dependencies resolve. Documenting changes suits environments where the plan's mechanics are already proven. Effectiveness requires executing a failover test against the current configuration.
- ✓
Conduct a tabletop exercise now, followed by a partial failover test of critical applications.
Why this is correct
Infrastructure drift since the last test invalidates prior validation, so a tabletop exercise cheaply exposes process gaps before a partial failover exercises critical applications against current configuration, confirming the plan still meets its recovery objectives without risking the whole estate.
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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 CCSP 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 CCSP exam.