The role of RPO and RTO in disaster recovery planning

Abstract

As multiple research and surveys published in recent years show, disaster recovery is becoming an increasingly important factor in business continuity. Renowned British information provider IHS Markit states that organizations experience an average of 5 downtime events per month which is equivalent to 27 hours. This turns into significant losses or even leads to business closure. Careful disaster recovery planning is required to reduce losses, and two of the most important attributes used to measure the efficiency of the data protection and recovery process are the recovery time objective (RTO) and the recovery point objective (RPO). Based on the analysis of some recognized technical disaster recovery solutions, their related documentation and some publications of important specialists in the field, this article emphasizes the role of RTO and RPO in disaster recovery planning. As a result of the research, the place of RTO and RPO in information disaster recovery was highlighted, as well as the key elements in the calculation process of these two strategic recovery objectives.