SY0-701 Question 238
Single answerGeographic dispersionA financial services company is updating its business continuity plan after a regional power failure took its primary data center offline for two days. Leadership wants to reduce the chance that a single natural disaster or utility outage will interrupt critical authentication and transaction-processing systems again. Which action BEST addresses this requirement?
- A
Place backup generators and additional UPS units in the same primary data center
- B
Implement geographically dispersed redundant sites in different regions for critical systems
- C
Increase password complexity requirements for administrators of the primary site
- D
Move all critical servers to a single larger facility with stronger physical security
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The best answer is to implement geographically dispersed redundant sites in different regions for critical systems. In Security+, geographic dispersion is used to support high availability, business continuity, and disaster recovery by separating critical operations so that one local or regional event does not cause total service loss. This aligns with common business continuity and disaster recovery best practices, including maintaining alternate processing sites and avoiding single points of failure tied to one geographic area. Guidance from sources such as NIST contingency planning publications emphasizes redundancy, alternate sites, and resilience planning for availability. Local power protections like UPS and generators are useful, but they do not provide the same level of protection against broader regional disruptions.
- A. Incorrect.
This improves local resilience against short-term power issues, but it does not address the core risk of a regional event affecting one location. If the same area experiences flooding, wildfire, telecom disruption, or an extended grid failure, systems in that single site can still become unavailable. Candidates may choose this because generators and UPS devices are common continuity controls, but they are not a substitute for geographic dispersion.
- B. Correct.
This is correct because geographic dispersion places redundant infrastructure in separate regions so that a disaster affecting one area is less likely to disrupt all critical services. For business continuity and disaster recovery, distributing key systems such as authentication and transaction processing across multiple geographically separated sites reduces single points of failure tied to one location, including regional utility outages and natural disasters.
- C. Incorrect.
This strengthens administrative security, but it does not meaningfully improve availability during a regional outage. The scenario is focused on resilience and continuity of operations, not credential security. This distractor reflects a common mistake of selecting a valid security control that addresses a different objective.
- D. Incorrect.
A larger and more secure single facility may reduce some local physical risks, but it still leaves the organization vulnerable to a site-wide or region-wide disruption. Consolidation into one location generally increases dependency on that site rather than reducing it. Someone might choose this option because physical security is important, but it does not solve the geographic concentration risk described in the scenario.