A cold site is a disaster recovery location that provides only the basic infrastructure, such as physical space, power, and cooling, but lacks the necessary IT and networking equipment. The process of procuring, installing, and configuring all required hardware and software, along with restoring data, is lengthy. A recovery timeline of four weeks is characteristic of a cold site, as it takes a significant amount of time to make the site fully operational from a "cold" start.

A. Hot site: A hot site is a fully equipped and configured duplicate of the primary site that can be failed over to almost instantaneously, typically within minutes to hours.

B. Warm site: A warm site is partially equipped with hardware and connectivity but requires data restoration and final configuration, with a recovery time of hours to a few days.

D. Active-active approach: This is a high-availability configuration where multiple sites are simultaneously serving live traffic. A failure at one site results in an immediate, often seamless, transition of traffic to the other active sites.

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-34 Rev. 1

Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems.

Section 4.3.2

Alternate Processing Sites: This section defines the different types of recovery sites. It states

"A cold site provides only the basic environment... no IT equipment is installed... it would take weeks to make a cold site fully operational." In contrast

it defines a warm site's recovery as "within 12 hours" and a hot site as ready "within a few hours."

2. Purdue University

Information Technology

Business Continuity Planning.

Section: Alternate Site Categories: The document describes a cold site as "an environmentally equipped space... It will take weeks to get a cold site ready." This aligns with the scenario's four-week timeframe.

3. Valacich

J. S.

& George

J. F. (2020). Modern Systems Analysis and Design (9th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter 14

"Maintaining Information Systems": In the section on disaster recovery

the text defines a cold site as "a room with heat

air conditioning

and electricity." It notes that bringing a cold site to an operational state is a time-consuming process involving the installation of all necessary hardware and software.