Data Backup and Recovery Flashcards

What is the purpose of a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?

Answer: To outline procedures for restoring IT systems and data after a disruptive event

A disaster recovery plan provides documented procedures for restoring IT infrastructure, systems, and data after events like natural disasters, cyberattacks, or hardware failures.

What advantage does cloud backup offer over local-only backup solutions?

Answer: Cloud backups provide geographic redundancy protecting against site-level disasters

Cloud backups store data in geographically distributed data centers, protecting against site-level disasters such as fires, floods, or earthquakes that could destroy local backups.

What is versioning in the context of data backup?

Answer: Maintaining multiple historical versions of files so previous states can be restored

Versioning preserves multiple historical copies of files, allowing users to restore data to a specific point in time rather than only the most recent backup.

Why is it important to encrypt backup data?

Answer: Encryption protects backup data from unauthorized access if the backup media is lost or stolen

Encrypting backups ensures that even if backup media is physically stolen or accessed by unauthorized individuals, the data remains unreadable without the encryption key.

What is a Recovery Time Objective (RTO)?

Answer: The maximum acceptable downtime before systems must be restored after a failure

RTO defines the maximum acceptable time between a system failure and the restoration of service, driving decisions about backup infrastructure and recovery procedures.

What is the risk of relying solely on a single backup location?

Answer: A single point of failure means one event could destroy both primary data and the backup

Storing backups in only one location creates a single point of failure where a single event—such as a fire, flood, or ransomware attack—could destroy both the primary data and its backup simultaneously.