CISM Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the PRIMARY purpose of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
- To eliminate all risks that could disrupt business operations
- To ensure critical business functions can continue during and after a disruption (Correct answer)
- To document the IT infrastructure and recovery procedures
- To assign accountability for security incidents to key personnel
Correct answer: To ensure critical business functions can continue during and after a disruption
A BCP is designed to ensure that critical business functions can continue during and after a disruption, minimizing operational impact.
Question 2: Which metric defines the maximum amount of data loss an organization can tolerate, measured in time?
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
- Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD)
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) (Correct answer)
- Mean Time to Recover (MTTR)
Correct answer: Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, indicating how far back in time a recovery point must be.
Question 3: What is the FIRST step in developing a Business Continuity Plan?
- Identifying recovery strategies and backup sites
- Conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) (Correct answer)
- Defining roles and responsibilities for the recovery team
- Establishing communication procedures for incidents
Correct answer: Conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is conducted first to identify critical business functions and quantify the impact of disruptions before recovery strategies are defined.
Question 4: A Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of four hours means:
- Data must be restored to within four hours of the last backup
- The system must be fully functional within four hours of a disaster declaration (Correct answer)
- The business can tolerate four hours of data loss before operations are impacted
- Recovery teams must assemble within four hours of an incident
Correct answer: The system must be fully functional within four hours of a disaster declaration
RTO specifies the maximum acceptable time to restore a system or process to operational status after a disruption is declared.
Question 5: Who holds ULTIMATE responsibility for ensuring that business continuity planning is adequate and funded?
- The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
- The Business Continuity Manager
- Senior management or the board of directors (Correct answer)
- The IT disaster recovery team lead
Correct answer: Senior management or the board of directors
Senior management and the board of directors are ultimately accountable for business continuity, as they are responsible for the organization's overall resilience and risk posture.
Question 6: What distinguishes a hot site from a warm site in disaster recovery?
- A hot site is located in a different country, while a warm site is domestic
- A hot site has fully operational systems with current data, while a warm site has equipment but requires setup time (Correct answer)
- A hot site is owned by the organization, while a warm site is leased from a vendor
- A hot site supports only critical systems, while a warm site supports all systems
Correct answer: A hot site has fully operational systems with current data, while a warm site has equipment but requires setup time
A hot site is fully equipped and operational with current data, enabling near-immediate failover, whereas a warm site has hardware but requires configuration and data restoration before use.
Question 7: A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) primarily helps an organization:
- Identify security vulnerabilities in critical systems
- Prioritize recovery efforts based on criticality and financial impact (Correct answer)
- Determine which employees are essential during a disaster
- Select vendors for offsite data storage solutions
Correct answer: Prioritize recovery efforts based on criticality and financial impact
A BIA prioritizes recovery efforts by quantifying the financial, operational, and reputational impact of disruptions to each business function.
CISM Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 1
What is the PRIMARY purpose of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?