SSCP Incident Response and Recovery Practice Question
A company is selecting a disaster recovery site for its critical applications. Which THREE characteristics differentiate a warm site from a cold site? (Select three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse warm sites with hot sites, incorrectly attributing features like live data replication or rapid recovery (hours) to warm sites. In the SSCP exam, focus on the fact that warm sites have pre-installed infrastructure and environmental controls but require backup restoration before full operation.
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
✓
A warm site has environmental controls (power, cooling) already in place.
A warm site is partially configured with environmental controls such as power, cooling, and network connectivity already in place. This distinguishes it from a cold site, which lacks these infrastructure components and requires significant setup time. The presence of environmental controls is a key differentiator that allows a warm site to become operational faster than a cold site, though it still requires data restoration from backups before full recovery.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A warm site is typically ready to operate within hours.
Why it's wrong here
Warm sites may take hours to days; hot sites are ready within minutes.
- ✓
A warm site has environmental controls (power, cooling) already in place.
Why this is correct
Cold sites lack environmental controls; warm sites have them.
- ✓
A warm site has pre-installed servers and network equipment.
Why this is correct
Cold sites do not have equipment installed.
- ✗
A warm site has live data replication from the primary site.
Why it's wrong here
Live replication is characteristic of hot sites.
- ✓
A warm site requires data restoration from backups before use.
Why this is correct
Both warm and cold sites require data restoration; however, warm sites may have recent backups loaded.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SSCP 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 SSCP exam.