ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR) & Incident Response (IR) ConceptsEasy
A critical server hosting an organization's primary customer database experiences a sudden power surge, rendering it inoperable. The organization has a backup strategy in place that performs daily full backups to an offsite location. If the power surge occurred at 2:00 PM and the last successful backup was at 1:00 AM the same day, what is the maximum amount of data (measured in time) the organization stands to lose?
- A25 hours
- B13 hours
- C1 hour
- D24 hours
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. 13 hours
The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. In this scenario, the last backup was at 1:00 AM, and the incident occurred at 2:00 PM. The time difference is 13 hours (from 1 AM to 2 PM), representing the potential data loss.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. This calculation is incorrect and overestimates the data loss based on the given times.
- C. This would be the case if the incident happened 1 hour after the backup, not 13 hours.
- D. This would be the case if the last backup was a full day before the incident, which is not stated.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time from a disaster event. It determines the frequency of backups or replication.
- Defines data loss tolerance
- Measured in time (e.g., 4 hours, 24 hours)
- Influences backup frequency and replication strategies
Memory trick: RPO: How much Recent data can I Potentially lose, Oh?