PECB Certified Lead Disaster Recovery Manager study plan

Define disaster recovery, business continuity, and crisis management, and articulate the boundaries and dependencies among them in your own written summary

Distinguish RTO, RPO, MTD, WRT, and MTBF, and compute each from a short scenario containing stated outage and data-loss constraints

Sequence the DR lifecycle phases (program initiation, risk and BIA, strategy selection, plan development, testing, maintenance) and map each to the exam domains

Classify recovery tiers and site types (hot, warm, cold, reciprocal, mobile, cloud) by cost, readiness, and RTO characteristics

Draft a glossary of 25 DR terms with one accurate definition and one concrete example each

Design a risk assessment method that identifies threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood, and impact for a sample organization

Build a qualitative risk register with scored risks, owners, and treatment options, and rank the top five for DR prioritization

Construct a BIA questionnaire covering process inputs, dependencies, peak periods, and financial and regulatory impacts

Perform a BIA for five business processes and derive RTO and RPO targets from MTD using the recovery time cushion principle

Identify critical technology and supplier dependencies and record single points of failure

Translate BIA outputs into DR requirements and scope statements that name in-scope systems, sites, and services

Compare data replication approaches (synchronous, asynchronous, snapshot, backup-to-cloud) against stated RPO targets and justify a selection

Evaluate recovery site and infrastructure strategies against cost, RTO, and geographic risk separation criteria

Assess high-availability and redundancy designs (clustering, load balancing, failover) and state their limits during a site-level disaster

Recommend an integrated DR strategy set for a sample organization and defend each choice in writing

Design recovery solutions for data, applications, networks, and end-user access, and document dependencies between them

Specify cloud and third-party recovery arrangements, including shared responsibility, contract clauses, and provider outage assumptions

Identify DR program roles (sponsor, DR manager, recovery teams) and draft a RACI for activation and recovery activities

Draft DR policy elements: scope, objectives, authority to declare a disaster, and escalation thresholds

Establish a governance cadence with review, audit, and reporting requirements tied to program maturity

Write a DR plan structure with activation criteria, declaration authority, and call-out procedures

Produce recovery runbooks for two critical systems with ordered steps, owners, and verification checkpoints

Define communication plans for staff, customers, regulators, and media, including templates and approval paths

Integrate DR with incident response, crisis management, and business continuity plans, and remove conflicts between them

Set plan formatting standards so recovery teams can execute under stress without ambiguity

Design a test and exercise program spanning plan review, tabletop, simulation, and full failover, with increasing rigor

Write test objectives, scope, success criteria, and safety controls for a tabletop exercise

Create a test scenario with injects that stress decision-making, escalation, and communications

Define how to capture observations, log issues, and assign corrective actions with owners and due dates

Distinguish test types by cost, risk, and assurance value, and justify an annual exercise calendar

Run a tabletop exercise against your week 5 plan and record every gap, delay, and unclear step

Produce an after-action report with findings, root causes, and prioritized corrective actions

Revise the DR plan to close the top five findings and record version changes in a change log

Define maintenance triggers (organizational change, new systems, test results, threat changes) and a review schedule

Build a DR awareness and training approach for recovery teams and general staff

Consolidate all domains into a one-page concept map linking BIA outputs to strategies, plans, and tests

Answer timed practice questions across all domains and analyze errors by domain and reasoning type

Rehearse explaining DR program justification to an executive audience in a five-minute written brief

Review weak areas identified in practice and close knowledge gaps with targeted notes

Assemble a final exam-day reference sheet of metrics, formulas, and decision rules