A company intends to implement a comprehensive monitoring strategy for its data protection infrastructure.

Before any monitoring system can be effectively implemented, the organization must first define precisely what will be monitored, which metrics and thresholds matter (such as capacity utilization, job success/failure rates, replication lag, or component health status), and what constitutes a normal versus an abnormal condition worth alerting on. Without this foundational step of clearly defining monitoring parameters, any subsequent tooling, integration, or scope decisions would lack the criteria needed to be meaningful, making parameter definition the logical and necessary first step in building a comprehensive monitoring strategy. Integrating third-party applications (A) is a tooling and implementation decision that should follow, not precede, the definition of what needs to be monitored; selecting and integrating tools before knowing what parameters they need to track risks choosing solutions that do not fit actual requirements. Focusing on monitoring only critical applications (C) prematurely narrows scope before the organization has even defined the parameters and criteria that would determine what is critical and why, undermining the 'comprehensive' nature of the strategy being built. Beginning with performance reviews (D) is an evaluative activity typically performed after a monitoring system has been running for some time and generating data, not a starting point for designing the monitoring approach itself. Defining monitoring parameters clearly is correct.

Reference topic: Managing the Data Protection Environment - Designing a Monitoring Strategy.