Availability

Question 1

What is most important when an organization depends on a 3rd party service provider for WAN (wide area network)?

Answer 1

Ensuring that the service providers BCP aligns with the organizations BCP (Business continuity plan)

Question 1

What is the best way to determine he operating effectiveness of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Answer 1

By reviewing the results of previous business continuity tests conducted by IT and end-user perssonel.

Question 2

How do you calculate Service Availability?

Answer 2

Availability % = (Agreed Service Time-Downtime)/Agreed Service Time

Question 3

What expectations do service level agreements outline?

Answer 3

They specify the expectations of service availability, usage, performance, capacity, processing, storage requirements, responsibilities of each party, and penalties for noncompliance. –They do not cover Location of disaster recovery sites.

Question 4

What is the main objective of a disaster recovery plan?

Answer 4

To specify the steps required to resume operations.

Question 5

What is the difference between Hot, Warm, Cold, Mirrored disaster recovery sites?

Answer 5

• Hot - Has computers and data ready to begin operations.
• Warm - Has power, phones, networks, servers, and other resources, but not immediately ready to begin operations. (Computer systems may need to be configured)
• Cold - Available site, but not computer or technology resources set up.
• Off site Mirrored server - Mirrored server and can take over operations immediately for mission critical data or services (gov’t)”

Question 6

What does a statement of responsibilities include?

Answer 6

It outlines the riles and duties of each person or team innvolved in the recovery process.

Question 7

What do backup and downtime controls do?

Answer 7

They are strategies to minimize downtime, safeguarding critical data and maintaining continuous operations during disaster or system failures.

Question 8

What is the purpose of Availability reports?

Answer 8

They quantify the uptime and downtime of a system to determine if the performance is meeting the SLA.

Question 9

What is the difference between Mirroring and Replication?

Answer 9

Mirroring involves copying the entire database on separate machines. Replication generates redundant data and database objects on different databases.

Question 10

What is RTO?

Answer 10

Recovery Time Objective

Question 11

What is a disadvantage of lower RTO?

Answer 11

They have higher costs recovery strategies, lower disaster tolerances, narrower interruption windows, and less permissive data loss.

Question 12

What is the difference between Differential and Full Backup methods?

Answer 12

Full backup saves all data while differential backup only saves data the is new or changed since the last full backup.

Question 13

What are the techniques used in BIA (Business Impact Analysis)?

Answer 13

Interviews, questionnaires, observations, and workshops.

Question 14

What is the first step of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

Answer 14

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).

Question 15

What is the RTO and what is its purpose?

Answer 15

RTO or Recovery Time Objective is a target for the max downtime a business can tolerate. A baseline RTO is established during a BIA (Business Impact Analysis) to calculate the cost (tangible - $ and intangible- reputation)of downtime.

Question 16

What is the difference bewtween business resilience and business continuity?

Answer 16

Business resilience is focused on overcoming long-term, organizational risks, while business continuity pertains to remaining functional during short term, situational crises.