SSCP Security Operations and Administration Practice Question
A company's backup strategy uses a full backup on Sundays and differential backups on other days. On Thursday, the storage system fails. How many backups are required to restore the data?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse differential backups with incremental backups, leading candidates to think they need all backups from Monday to Thursday (Option B) or all backups (Option D), when in fact only the full and the latest differential are required.
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
✓
Two (the full backup and the Thursday differential)
A differential backup copies all data changed since the last full backup. Therefore, to restore data on Thursday, you need the last full backup (Sunday) and the most recent differential backup (Thursday), which contains all changes from Sunday through Thursday. This totals two backups.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
One (the full backup only)
Why it's wrong here
Differential backups capture every change since the last full backup, so Thursday's differential alone cannot reconstruct Monday to Wednesday modifications. Restoring only Sunday's full would lose those days. It is tempting because a full backup is self-contained, and with a full-plus-incremental scheme the full plus one incremental would indeed suffice.
- ✗
Five (the full backup and all differentials from Monday to Thursday)
Why it's wrong here
Differential backups each contain all changes since Sunday's full, so Monday's through Wednesday's copies are redundant; Thursday's differential already supersedes them. It is tempting because it mirrors the incremental model, where every daily backup since the full must be applied in sequence, making five tapes the correct count there.
- ✓
Two (the full backup and the Thursday differential)
Why this is correct
Differential backups capture all changes since the last full backup, so Thursday's differential already contains Monday through Thursday's modifications. Restoration therefore needs only the Sunday full plus that single Thursday differential — two sets — satisfying the stem's recovery requirement without replaying intermediate daily backups.
- ✗
Six (all backups from Sunday to Thursday)
Why it's wrong here
Only the Sunday full and Thursday's differential are needed, since each differential already accumulates all changes since the full; the intermediate dailies add nothing. It is tempting because it matches the incremental scheme, where every backup from the full onward must be restored in order, making six the right answer there.
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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.