SSCP Systems Security Certified PractitionerIncident Response and RecoveryHard
A company is reviewing its disaster recovery plan. They have identified that their critical financial reporting system requires a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour. To meet these objectives, which combination of backup strategy and recovery site is MOST appropriate?
- AHourly differential backups to a warm site.
- BDaily full backups to a warm site.
- CWeekly full backups with daily incremental backups to a cold site.
- DHourly incremental backups with a hot site.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Hourly incremental backups with a hot site.
An RTO of 4 hours and RPO of 1 hour are very aggressive. A hot site offers the fastest recovery time, and hourly incremental backups ensure data loss is kept within the 1-hour RPO, making this combination the most suitable.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Warm site might not meet 4hr RTO; hourly differential backups meet 1hr RPO but are less efficient than incremental with a hot site for very low RPO.
- B. Warm site might not meet 4hr RTO; daily backups don't meet 1hr RPO.
- C. Cold site is too slow for 4hr RTO; weekly/daily backups are too infrequent for 1hr RPO.
RTO and RPO Alignment
The process of selecting appropriate disaster recovery strategies (backup types, recovery sites) that align with defined Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).
- Lower RTO/RPO require more expensive solutions.
- Hot sites and continuous replication support aggressive RTO/RPO.
- Trade-offs between cost, speed, and data loss.
Memory trick: Aggressive RTO/RPO needs 'Hot' and 'Frequent' solutions.