Key terms

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

The maximum amount of time a system or process can be down before the impact becomes unacceptable. A customer-facing payment system might have an RTO of minutes; an internal reporting tool might tolerate a day or more.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

The maximum amount of data loss that's acceptable, measured in time. An RPO of four hours means you can tolerate losing up to four hours of data since the last backup, but no more, which directly determines how often backups need to run.

Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD)

The absolute point beyond which the disruption threatens the organisation's survival, not just causes inconvenience. This is usually a much longer timeframe than the RTO for individual systems, and it's a useful reality check on priorities.

These terms matter because they turn "we need to recover quickly" into specific, measurable targets that actually shape technical and operational decisions.