PECB Certified Lead Disaster Recovery Manager flashcards
PECB Certified Lead Disaster Recovery Manager · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Recovery Time Objective
- The maximum acceptable elapsed time to restore a service or function after a disruption. RTO is set from business impact analysis and drives the choice of DR strategy and site tier.
- Recovery Point Objective
- The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured backward in time from the incident. RPO determines backup frequency and replication mode, and cannot be tighter than the implemented mechanism.
- Maximum Tolerable Downtime
- The longest period a business function can be unavailable before unacceptable harm occurs. MTD must be at least the sum of detection, response, and recovery time.
- Availability formula
- Availability equals MTBF divided by the sum of MTBF and MTTR. Increasing mean time between failures or reducing mean time to repair both raise overall service availability.
- Hot site
- A recovery facility with pre-installed hardware and replicated data that can take over operations within hours. It offers a low RTO at high ongoing cost compared with warm or cold sites.
- Cold site
- A recovery facility providing only space, power, and basic connectivity with no pre-installed systems. It has the highest RTO and lowest cost, and requires full rebuild from backups.
- DR versus business continuity
- Disaster recovery restores technology and data services after disruption, while business continuity sustains critical business functions. DR is therefore a subset of the wider continuity management system.
- DR program charter
- A formal document granting the DR program its scope, authority, budget, and named executive sponsor. Without an accountable owner the program cannot enforce requirements across the organization.
- Steering committee role
- The governance body that sets DR strategic direction, approves funding, and formally accepts residual risk. It does not execute recovery procedures, which belong to the recovery teams.
- Three lines model
- A governance structure where operations own and execute controls, risk and compliance functions monitor them, and internal audit provides independent assurance to the governing body.
- Policy hierarchy
- The document chain from policy stating intent and principles, to standards stating mandatory requirements, to procedures and runbooks with execution steps, to records providing evidence.
- RACI accountability rule
- Each DR activity must have exactly one accountable role in the responsibility matrix. Assigning multiple accountable owners is a governance defect that dilutes decision authority.
- DR key performance indicators
- Measurable program metrics such as percentage of plans tested on schedule, percentage of RTOs met in exercises, overdue corrective actions, and proportion of trained recovery staff.
- DR key risk indicators
- Forward-looking metrics signaling rising DR risk, such as age of untested plans, concentration of critical systems with one provider, and drift between configuration records and procedures.
- Competence records
- Documented evidence that recovery staff completed required training and are current on their roles. Auditors use these records to verify awareness and training controls actually operate.
- Business impact analysis
- A structured analysis quantifying how disruption affects a function over time across financial, regulatory, safety, operational, and reputational dimensions. It is the authoritative source of RTO, RPO, and MTD.
- Dependency mapping
- Identifying upstream suppliers, downstream consumers, shared infrastructure, identity services, DNS, and network paths that a critical function relies on. One shared dependency can invalidate many recovery objectives.
- Criticality tiers
- Classification of functions by impact thresholds, for example tier 1 where loss is unacceptable within hours, tier 2 tolerable to 24 hours, and tier 3 tolerable for days.
- Risk treatment options
- The four responses to assessed risk: treat by applying controls, transfer through insurance or contract, tolerate with signed acceptance, or terminate the activity creating the risk.
- Risk register entry
- A record containing risk description, owner, date, treatment action, residual rating, and acceptance signature. Acceptance without an accountable signatory is not valid evidence.
- Transaction rate conversion
- A method converting maximum tolerable data loss expressed in transactions or currency into time, by dividing by average transaction rate to derive an RPO in minutes or hours.
- BIA validation
- Confirming impact analysis results through interviews with function owners and cross-checks against financial and operational records, rather than relying on a single self-completed questionnaire.
- 3-2-1 backup rule
- Keep at least three copies of data, on two different media or systems, with one copy offsite or offline. An immutable or air-gapped copy protects against ransomware encryption.
- Synchronous replication
- A replication mode where writes are confirmed only after reaching the remote copy, giving near-zero RPO. It adds latency and imposes practical distance limits between sites.
- Asynchronous replication
- A replication mode where writes are confirmed locally and shipped to the remote copy afterward. It avoids latency impact but produces a nonzero RPO equal to the replication lag.
- Pilot light pattern
- A cloud DR approach keeping core data replicated and a minimal version of the environment running. Recovery scales up services on demand, balancing cost against recovery time.
- Warm standby pattern
- A cloud DR approach running a scaled-down but fully functional copy of production that can be scaled up during disaster. It offers a shorter RTO than pilot light at higher cost.
- High availability versus DR
- High availability uses local redundancy, clustering, and in-site failover to reduce MTTR, while DR recovers services at a separate location. HA does not substitute for a DR capability.
- Recovery dependency order
- The sequence for restoration: facilities and network first, then identity and directory services, then data stores, then business applications. Applications fail if dependencies are restored later.
- DR plan activation criteria
- Objective, pre-agreed conditions such as a declared outage exceeding a stated duration or impact threshold, so that invoking the plan is not a judgment call under pressure.
- Parallel test
- An exercise running recovery systems alongside production without shutting production down. It validates recovery capability and measures actual RTO while limiting business risk.
- Corrective action register
- A log of exercise and incident findings with assigned owner, due date, and status. Closure is verified by retesting the affected procedure, not by marking the item complete.