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CCSP Practice Question: A financial services company runs a critical…
A financial services company runs a critical application on a cloud infrastructure. The application consists of a web tier, an application tier, and a database tier, all deployed in a single cloud region. The database is a managed relational database service with automated backups enabled. The company's disaster recovery plan requires a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour. During a recent regional outage, the primary region became unavailable for 6 hours. The company attempted to restore the database from the latest automated backup in a different region, but the restore took 5 hours due to the large database size, exceeding the RTO. Additionally, the backup was 2 hours old at the time of the outage, exceeding the RPO. The security team has also noted that the backup data is encrypted with a cloud-managed key, which may not meet future compliance requirements for customer-managed encryption keys. Which course of action should the company take to meet both the RTO and RPO objectives while also addressing the encryption requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous replication in the context of RPO/RTO, and the trap here is that candidates assume cross-region backups or asynchronous replication can meet strict RPO/RTO targets, ignoring the inherent latency and restore time penalties.
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 cross-region read replicas with synchronous replication and enable encryption with a customer-managed key that is replicated to the disaster recovery region.
Cross-region read replicas with synchronous replication can provide a standby database in another region with an RPO of effectively zero (synchronous replication ensures no data loss) and an RTO measured in minutes (promote the replica to primary), meeting both the 4-hour RTO and 1-hour RPO. Using a customer-managed key (CMK) replicated to the DR region satisfies the compliance requirement for customer-managed encryption keys, as the key can be controlled and audited independently of the cloud provider.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Implement cross-region read replicas with synchronous replication and enable encryption with a customer-managed key that is replicated to the disaster recovery region.
Why this is correct
Synchronous replicas provide RPO of seconds and failover in minutes; customer-managed keys meet compliance.
- ✗
Store the backup in a different region using cross-region copy and use a cloud HSM to manage the encryption key.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-region backup copies still require a restore, which is time-consuming, and HSM alone does not address RTO.
- ✗
Use cross-region asynchronous replication with a separate database instance and encrypt with a cloud-managed key.
Why it's wrong here
Asynchronous replication may not meet RPO, and cloud-managed key does not meet future compliance.
- ✗
Increase the frequency of automated backups to every 30 minutes and use faster storage for the database restore process.
Why it's wrong here
Faster storage may not reduce restore time enough, and backup frequency does not address restore time.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.