Backup and Disaster Recovery: Defining RTO and RPO Before You Need Them

Backups Are Not a Recovery Plan

Many businesses discover their backups are incomplete, corrupt or unrestorable only on the day they need them. A backup you have never test-restored is a hope, not a plan.

Two Numbers That Matter

RPO — recovery point objective — is how much data you can afford to lose, measured in time. RTO — recovery time objective — is how long you can afford to be down. Agree these with the business before an incident, because they decide how often you back up and how you architect recovery.

Then prove it: off-site or immutable copies, a documented runbook, and a restore test on a real schedule. Disaster recovery only counts once it has been rehearsed.