Which of the following provides the MOST assurance that a third-party hosting provider will be able to meet availability requirements?

Question

Options

• ARight-to-audit clause
• BThe third party's incident response plan
• CService level agreement (SLA)
• DThe third party's business continuity plan (BCP)

• A
  6% (2)
• B
  3% (1)
• C
  91% (32)

Explanation

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contractually binding document that defines specific, measurable availability commitments (e.g., 99.9% uptime), along with penalties if those targets are not met - making it the strongest formal assurance of availability.

Why the distractors fall short:

• A (Right-to-audit): Gives you the ability to verify compliance, but doesn't itself guarantee availability - it's a monitoring tool, not a commitment.
• B (Incident response plan): Describes how the provider reacts after something goes wrong; it makes no upfront promise about availability levels.
• D (BCP): Addresses how the provider recovers from a major disruption, but again contains no enforceable availability metric or commitment to you as a customer.

Memory tip: Think of the SLA as the contract with teeth - it's the only option that combines a specific availability promise with legal/financial accountability. When a question asks for "assurance" or "guarantee," look for the enforceable, measurable commitment, not a plan or a right.

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