SSCP Incident Response and Recovery Practice Question
An organization's disaster recovery plan specifies an RPO of 4 hours and an RTO of 24 hours for a critical database. Which of the following best describes these metrics?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse RPO with downtime and RTO with data loss, leading candidates to swap the definitions or misassign the time values.
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
✓
RPO means up to 4 hours of data loss; RTO means the database must be recovered within 24 hours.
RPO (Recovery Point Objective) defines the maximum acceptable data loss measured in time, meaning up to 4 hours of transactions could be lost. RTO (Recovery Time Objective) defines the maximum acceptable downtime, meaning the database must be fully operational within 24 hours after a disaster.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
RPO means up to 4 hours of data loss; RTO means the database must be recovered within 24 hours.
Why this is correct
RPO defines the maximum tolerable data loss measured in time, so four hours means the recovery point may lose up to four hours of transactions. RTO defines the maximum acceptable downtime, so the database must be operational again within 24 hours of disruption.
- ✗
RPO means recovery point objective; RTO means recovery time objective.
Why it's wrong here
This states the correct expansions but the stem asks which option describes the metrics, and this option merely restates the acronyms without explaining that 4 hours is maximum tolerable data loss and 24 hours maximum downtime. It is tempting because the expansions are accurate, yet it omits the meaning the scenario requires.
- ✗
RPO means the database can be down for up to 4 hours; RTO means up to 24 hours of data loss.
Why it's wrong here
The metrics are inverted: RPO concerns data loss, not downtime, and RTO concerns downtime, not data loss. Here RPO 4 hours means at most four hours of data may be lost, while RTO 24 hours allows up to a day of outage. Swapping them would be correct only if the stem assigned those values oppositely.
- ✗
RPO means the database must be recovered within 4 hours; RTO means up to 24 hours of data loss.
Why it's wrong here
The definitions are swapped: RPO bounds acceptable data loss, not recovery duration, and RTO bounds downtime, not data loss. With RPO 4 hours, up to four hours of data may be lost; RTO 24 hours permits a full day of downtime. The reversed pairing would be correct only if the stem's values were exchanged.
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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.