Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum amount of data that your company is willing to lose in a disaster. Most businesses backup their data at specific intervals (hourly, daily, or even weekly). Your RPO target informs your backup schedule frequency so as not to severely damage your business from data loss. For example, a business backs up their data every day at noon and a disaster occurs as 8PM; the company would lose eight hours’ worth of data. If your RPO is twenty-four hours or longer, you should be in good shape (assuming you set a proper RPO for your business). But if your RPO is four hours, you’re going to be severely impacted by this event.  Know your RPO and test it to confirm it works for your business.

Source: MSP360

Additional Reading: RPO and RTO – What do I need to Know?

Related Terms: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan, Restore (Recover), Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

What should you do as an SMB Owner?

It’s important to have a formal Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan. Your BCDR plan looks at both your RPO and something else called your Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Your RTO is how long you can be down for.  You need to ensure that for your business your RTO and RPO goals are short enough to prevent a business failure. Here are some tips that CyberHoot recommends to have an effective RPO and RTO:
  • CyberHoot recommends strong data backup processes following the rule of three (3) for backups:
      • Have at least three (3) copies of your data.
      • Store the copies on at least two (2) different media types.
      • Keep at least one (1) of those copies offsite.
  • Have a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan in place.
  • Test your disaster recovery plan and see if there are any gaps that need to be filled.

To learn more about RPO and RTO, watch this short video:

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