- The C)DRE Snapshot: Numbers to Memorize
- The Nine-Module Map at a Glance
- Introduction and Business Impact Analysis Essentials
- BCP and DRP Design, Plus IT Recovery Strategies
- IT Resiliency and the Implementation Phase
- Testing, Exercises, Maintenance and Execution
- The Pandemics Module
- Exam Mechanics and Registration Facts
- Credential Life: Validity and Renewal
- Sequencing Your Review by Module
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The C)DRE exam is 100 multiple-choice questions in roughly two hours, with a 70% minimum to pass.
- Preparation follows nine published Mile2 course modules; they are unweighted, so never assume a module is "worth" a set percentage.
- The exam combo lists at US$795 with a US$500 promotional price and includes two attempts.
- Credential validity is three years; the CEU renewal path requires 60 CEUs plus ethics/policy acknowledgment.
The C)DRE Snapshot: Numbers to Memorize
The Certified Disaster Recovery Engineer credential, styled C)DRE, is issued by Mile2. This page is built as a quick-reference sheet: the facts you should be able to recite without notes the night before your attempt. For a slower, structured plan, pair it with the C)DRE study guide; this sheet is the compressed version.
| Item | What to Know |
|---|---|
| Issuing body | Mile2 |
| Question format | 100 multiple-choice questions |
| Time allowed | Approximately 2 hours (course outline and general FAQ both indicate two hours) |
| Minimum to pass | 70% |
| Scored vs. unscored split | Not publicly disclosed |
| Candidate pass rate | Not publicly disclosed |
| Course length | Four days; awards 32 CEUs |
| Suggested experience | Twelve months in Information Systems and twelve months in Information Systems Management (suggested, not mandatory) |
| Training required? | No; training is not required to attempt certification |
| Credential validity | Three years |
The Nine-Module Map at a Glance
The current Mile2 course outline for C)DRE is undated and lists nine modules. It is a course outline, not a weighted exam blueprint, so there are no official domain percentages and no verified "largest domain." Treat every module as testable and weight your own effort by your weaknesses rather than by invented numbers. For a deeper walkthrough, see the complete guide to all nine C)DRE content areas.
- Introduction
- Business Impact Analysis
- BCP and DRP Design
- IT Recovery Strategies
- IT Resiliency
- Implementation Phase
- Testing and Exercise
- Maintenance and Execution
- Pandemics
Notice the arc: the sequence follows the lifecycle of a continuity and recovery program, from foundations and analysis through design, implementation, validation and long-term upkeep. Remembering that lifecycle helps you answer scenario questions, because most wrong answers skip a step or put one out of order.
Introduction and Business Impact Analysis Essentials
Introduction
This module sets the vocabulary and framing for everything after it. Expect questions that test whether you can distinguish closely related terms.
- Business continuity versus disaster recovery: continuity concerns keeping the organization's critical functions running; disaster recovery concerns restoring IT systems and data.
- Why programs need management support, defined scope and clear ownership before technical work begins.
- The basic lifecycle idea: analyze, design, implement, test, maintain.
Business Impact Analysis
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is the keystone concept. It identifies what the organization cannot afford to lose and how quickly it must be restored.
- Identify critical business functions and the processes, applications and data they depend on.
- Quantify impact of disruption over time, both financial and non-financial (reputation, legal and regulatory exposure, safety).
- Derive recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO) and maximum tolerable downtime concepts from the analysis rather than picking numbers arbitrarily.
- Map dependencies: a critical application is only as recoverable as the systems, facilities, vendors and people it relies on.
- Understand the relationship between risk assessment and BIA: risk looks at threats and likelihood, BIA looks at impact regardless of cause.
BCP and DRP Design, Plus IT Recovery Strategies
BCP and DRP Design
This module is about turning analysis into documented plans. Know the distinction in scope: the business continuity plan addresses the whole organization's ability to continue operating, while the disaster recovery plan is the technical subset focused on restoring IT services.
- Plan components typically include purpose and scope, roles and responsibilities, activation criteria, notification and escalation procedures, recovery procedures, and contact information.
- Know why plans define an incident declaration threshold: confusion about who may declare a disaster and when delays recovery.
- Understand that plans must assign named roles with alternates, since the primary person may be unavailable during an event.
- Recognize the role of communication plans for staff, customers, regulators and media.
IT Recovery Strategies
Once the BIA sets the objectives, strategies are the means of meeting them. Expect questions that ask you to match a strategy to a stated requirement. Cost rises as recovery time shrinks, which is the central trade-off.
| Concept | Core Idea | Typical Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Hot site | Fully equipped alternate facility ready for rapid takeover | Fastest recovery, highest cost |
| Warm site | Partially equipped; needs some setup and data restoration | Moderate time and cost |
| Cold site | Space and basic infrastructure only | Lowest cost, slowest recovery |
| Backup and restore | Periodic copies of data stored separately | RPO is bounded by backup frequency |
| Replication | Continuous or near-continuous copying to another location | Lower RPO, greater complexity and expense |
The reasoning pattern to rehearse: read the stated RTO and RPO, eliminate options that cannot meet them, then choose the least expensive option that remains. If a question gives a tight RPO, a nightly backup alone cannot satisfy it.
IT Resiliency and the Implementation Phase
IT Resiliency
Where recovery strategies restore service after failure, resiliency reduces the chance that failure becomes an outage in the first place.
- Redundancy and elimination of single points of failure across power, network, storage, compute and facilities.
- High availability and failover concepts, including how they differ from recovery after a disaster.
- Geographic separation, so a single regional event cannot take out both primary and recovery capability.
- Dependency resilience, including third-party providers and supply chain exposure.
Implementation Phase
This module covers moving from approved plans to operating capability.
- Acquiring and configuring the recovery infrastructure that the chosen strategies require.
- Documenting procedures at a level that a competent but unfamiliar person could follow under stress.
- Training staff on their roles and making sure everyone with a role knows the activation and communication process.
- Awareness programs that extend beyond the recovery team to the wider organization.
Key Takeaway
Do not blur resiliency and recovery on exam day. If the question concerns preventing or absorbing a failure without a declared disaster, think resiliency. If it concerns restoring service after a disruptive event, think recovery strategy.
Testing, Exercises, Maintenance and Execution
Testing and Exercise
An untested plan is an assumption. This module covers how organizations validate readiness, and the graduated ladder of test types is a likely source of questions.
- Plan review or checklist: confirming documents and contact data are current, with no operational disruption.
- Tabletop exercise: participants talk through a scenario to test decision-making and coordination.
- Walkthrough and simulation: stepping through procedures or modeling an event with greater realism.
- Technical recovery test: actually restoring systems or data at the recovery location.
- Full interruption or failover test: the most realistic and the most risky, since it can disrupt production.
Know the purpose of each: tests exist to find gaps, measure whether RTO and RPO can actually be met, and build staff familiarity. A test that finds problems is a success, not a failure. Document results, assign corrective actions and track them to closure.
Maintenance and Execution
- Plans decay: personnel change, systems are replaced, vendors shift, and contact lists go stale. Maintenance means a scheduled review cycle plus change-triggered updates.
- Change management must feed the continuity program so new applications and infrastructure are assessed for recovery impact.
- Execution covers actually invoking the plan during an incident: activation, damage assessment, notification, recovery operations, and the eventual return to normal operations.
- After-action review captures lessons learned and drives plan improvement.
The Pandemics Module
The Pandemics module is the one candidates most often under-prepare because it looks like an afterthought. It is a named module in the published course outline, so treat it as testable. The distinguishing feature of a pandemic scenario is that the threat is to people and availability of staff rather than to buildings or hardware.
Pandemics
Pandemic planning adapts continuity concepts to a prolonged, wide-area event that affects workforce availability.
- Prolonged duration: plans built for a short outage may not hold over weeks or months.
- Workforce impact: absenteeism, remote work arrangements, cross-training and succession for critical roles.
- Facilities may remain physically intact yet be unusable or restricted, which changes how alternate-site strategies apply.
- Supply chain and vendor disruption, since your suppliers are affected at the same time you are.
- Communication with employees, customers and public health or regulatory authorities.
A useful contrast for the exam: a fire or flood is localized and sudden, so geographic separation helps. A pandemic is widespread and gradual, so geographic separation alone does not protect staffing, and remote-capable operations and people-focused planning matter more.
Exam Mechanics and Registration Facts
Format and Delivery
The exam is 100 multiple-choice questions, with approximately two hours allowed. The minimum to pass is 70%. Mile2 delivers exams through its own online account and learning management system, historically referred to as MACS, and no external testing company has been verified. Most standard Mile2 exams do not require a scheduled live proctor, and C)DRE is not a named exception. Specific rules on open-book use, calculators, adaptive behavior and accommodations were not verified, so confirm those directly with Mile2 before you sit the exam rather than relying on assumption. Scheduling specifics are discussed in the exam dates and scheduling guide.
Fees
The official Exam Combo listing shows a US$500 promotional price against a US$795 list price. The combo includes two attempts and prep resources. It is not structured as a member/non-member split. The checkout price was not independently verified, so confirm the amount at purchase. A fuller breakdown lives in the certification cost guide.
Eligibility
Twelve months in Information Systems and twelve months in Information Systems Management are suggested, not mandatory, and training is not required to attempt certification. The four-day course awards 32 CEUs for those who take it. Details are in the requirements guide.
Credential Life: Validity and Renewal
The credential is valid for three years. Mile2 offers two renewal routes:
| Path | Requirements |
|---|---|
| CEU renewal | 60 CEUs, commonly 20 per year; ethics/policy acknowledgment; US regional renewal fee of $200 |
| Examination-based renewal | Alternative to the CEU path |
If you take the four-day course, its 32 CEUs count toward the credential's ongoing maintenance picture. Keep records of every CEU activity from the first year rather than reconstructing them in year three. For context on what the credential is worth over its life, the ROI analysis and the salary guide cover the career side, and the C)DRE jobs overview looks at the kinds of roles where continuity and recovery skills are valued.
Sequencing Your Review by Module
Because the modules form a dependency chain, the order in which you review them matters more than the total hours. This is a module-driven sequence rather than a generic calendar; adjust the pacing to your own timeline.
Foundations and BIA
- Cover Introduction vocabulary, then spend the bulk of the week on Business Impact Analysis.
- Practice deriving RTO, RPO and criticality from sample scenarios.
- Reason: every later module cites BIA output.
Design and Strategy
- Review BCP and DRP Design components and the BCP/DRP distinction.
- Build a matching table of IT Recovery Strategies against RTO/RPO requirements.
Resiliency, Implementation, Testing
- Separate resiliency from recovery in your notes.
- Memorize the ladder of test types and what each proves.
Maintenance, Pandemics, Timed Practice
- Close with Maintenance and Execution and the Pandemics module.
- Take full 100-question timed sets and review every miss by module.
Left-over time is best spent on whichever module your practice results show as weakest, since no official weighting tells you where the points are concentrated. For a fuller methodology, return to the complete study guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
The exam has 100 multiple-choice questions, with approximately two hours allowed, and a minimum of 70% to pass. Mile2 does not publicly disclose how many questions are scored versus unscored.
No official weighting has been verified. The nine modules come from the published course outline and are unweighted preparation topics, not an exhaustive or weighted exam blueprint. Prepare for all nine.
No. Training is not required to attempt certification. Twelve months each in Information Systems and Information Systems Management are suggested but not mandatory. The four-day course is optional and awards 32 CEUs.
The official Exam Combo listing shows a US$500 promotional price versus a US$795 list price, including two attempts and prep resources. The checkout price was not independently verified, so confirm the final amount when you purchase.
It is valid for three years. You can renew through CEUs (60 CEUs, commonly 20 per year, plus ethics/policy acknowledgment and a US regional renewal fee of $200) or through an examination-based alternative.