Free EC-Council Disaster Recovery Professional Practice Questions

Sample Practice Questions

Try these 10 sample questions from the EC-Council Disaster Recovery Professional practice bank. Each includes the answer and explanation. Continue with the interactive practice above to review the full question set.

1. 1What is the primary focus of a business continuity plan?

   1. A. Restoring individual servers to their most recent backup
   2. B. Sustaining business processes during and after a disruption
   3. C. Moving computing equipment from a damaged data center
   4. D. Containing malicious activity within compromised systems

   Answer: B

   Explanation: NIST states, "The BCP focuses on sustaining an organization’s mission/business processes during and after a disruption." The focus is continuity of business processes; server restoration, relocation, and incident containment support narrower objectives.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 2.2.1, p. 8

2. 2What is the role of a formal contingency planning policy within a continuity management program?

   1. A. Recording the commands needed to restore one server
   2. B. Replacing the business impact analysis with a uniform schedule
   3. C. Establishing overall objectives and organizational responsibilities
   4. D. Documenting the actual timeline of a completed recovery

   Answer: C

   Explanation: NIST says the policy should "define the organization’s overall contingency objectives and establish the organizational framework and responsibilities for system contingency planning." It provides program direction; technical runbooks, BIA results, and incident records serve different purposes.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 3.1, p. 14

3. 3An unsupported operating system contains a weakness that an attacker could exploit to interrupt recovery services. How should the weakness be classified in a risk assessment?

   1. A. A threat event
   2. B. An adverse impact
   3. C. A risk response
   4. D. A vulnerability

   Answer: D

   Explanation: NIST defines a vulnerability as "a weakness in an information system, system security procedures, internal controls, or implementation that could be exploited by a threat source." The weakness is distinct from the attack, resulting harm, or selected response.

   Reference: Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments — Section 2.3.1, Vulnerabilities and Predisposing Conditions, p. 9

4. 4Which question is central to the purpose of a business impact analysis?

   1. A. Who is most likely to attack a recovery server?
   2. B. What consequences would disrupted services have for business processes?
   3. C. Which exploit could bypass an application firewall?
   4. D. How many security alerts were generated by an incident?

   Answer: B

   Explanation: NIST describes the BIA purpose as correlating systems with critical processes and then "characterize the consequences of a disruption." Threat attribution, exploit analysis, and alert counts do not themselves establish the business consequences of unavailable services.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 3.2, p. 15

5. 5Which continuity plan element establishes a predefined transition of leadership when a principal becomes unavailable?

   1. A. A recovery point objective
   2. B. An alternate-site service agreement
   3. C. An order of succession
   4. D. An essential-records inventory

   Answer: C

   Explanation: FEMA explains, "Orders of succession enable an orderly and predefined transition of leadership within the organization." Recovery objectives, site agreements, and records inventories do not establish who succeeds an unavailable leader.

   Reference: Continuity Guidance Circular 1 — Continuity Guidance for Non-Federal Entities — Annex E, p. E-1

6. 6How does EC-Council describe the relationship between disaster recovery and business continuity?

   1. A. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity
   2. B. Business continuity is a subset of disaster recovery
   3. C. Both terms have identical organizational scope
   4. D. They are independent programs with no supporting relationship

   Answer: A

   Explanation: EC-Council states, "Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity." Recovery of technology supports the broader continuity of business functions. Reversing the relationship or treating the scopes as identical or unrelated misstates it.

   Reference: EC-Council Certified Disaster Recovery Professional — What is Disaster Recovery?

7. 7What is the primary purpose of data backups in a recovery strategy?

   1. A. Keeping production processing continuously available
   2. B. Retaining records solely for long-term reference
   3. C. Preventing unauthorized reading of production data
   4. D. Enabling data restoration after loss or disruption

   Answer: D

   Explanation: NIST states, "Data backups are done primarily for recovery purposes." Backup copies support restoration. Continuous availability, long-term record retention, and confidentiality protection are related but distinct objectives and mechanisms.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 5.1.2, p. 44

8. 8Why must a recovery plan contain procedures tailored to the actual system rather than rely solely on a generic recovery guide?

   1. A. Recovery steps depend on system types, configurations, and applications
   2. B. Generic guidance cannot describe any recognized recovery principles
   3. C. System-specific procedures eliminate the need for recovery validation
   4. D. A tailored plan removes dependencies on external infrastructure

   Answer: A

   Explanation: NIST notes, "Given the extensive variety of system types, configurations, and applications, this planning guide does not provide specific recovery procedures." The actual plan supplies executable procedures for its system. Tailoring does not invalidate general principles or eliminate validation and dependencies.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 4.3.2, p. 39

9. 9A plan's activation criterion is an outage expected to exceed its 4-hour RTO. Ten minutes into an outage, assessment indicates a 6-hour restoration time. What does the criterion support?

   1. A. Waiting until four hours have actually elapsed
   2. B. Ignoring the estimate because hardware is undamaged
   3. C. Activating the plan without waiting for the RTO to expire
   4. D. Waiting until all connected systems have also failed

   Answer: C

   Explanation: NIST lists "Expected duration of the outage lasting longer than the RTO" as an activation basis. The estimated six-hour outage exceeds the four-hour objective; the criterion concerns expected duration rather than elapsed time or failure of every system.

   Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 4.2.1, p. 36

10. 10Participants meet with a facilitator to discuss their recovery roles and responses to a scenario, without deploying equipment or resources. Which exercise method is this?

    1. A. A full-scale functional exercise
    2. B. An operational failover test
    3. C. A backup restoration test
    4. D. A tabletop exercise

    Answer: D

    Explanation: NIST states, "A tabletop exercise is discussion-based only and does not involve deploying equipment or other resources." Operational restoration, failover, and functional activities go beyond the discussion-only method described.

    Reference: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems — Section 3.5.3, Tabletop Exercises, p. 29