SSCP Systems Security Certified PractitionerIncident Response and RecoveryHard
A company is developing a disaster recovery plan (DRP) and is evaluating different backup strategies. They need a solution that provides the fastest recovery time objective (RTO) for mission-critical data while minimizing potential data loss. Which backup strategy best meets these requirements?
- AFull backups performed weekly with daily differential backups.
- BFull backups performed weekly with daily incremental backups.
- CContinuous Data Protection (CDP).
- DSnapshot-based backups performed nightly.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Continuous Data Protection (CDP).
Continuous Data Protection (CDP) offers the lowest RTO and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) by continuously backing up data as changes occur, virtually eliminating data loss and allowing recovery to any point in time.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Differential backups require restoring the last full backup and the latest differential, which is faster than incremental but still leaves a gap for data loss since the last differential.
- B. Incremental backups require restoring the last full backup and all subsequent incremental backups, resulting in a longer RTO and potential data loss since the last incremental.
- D. Nightly snapshots provide a good RTO/RPO but still involve potential data loss between snapshots and a recovery process that is not as granular as CDP.
Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
A backup and recovery strategy that continuously tracks and saves all changes to data, enabling restoration to any previous point in time with minimal data loss.
- Provides the lowest RPO and RTO.
- Captures changes in real-time.
- Often implemented with journaling or block-level replication.
Memory trick: Faster recovery means less data lost, more continuous protection.