Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RTO defines how quickly you must restore operations after a disruption, guiding technology investments and recovery strategies.

Why it matters

• Determines the speed and complexity of disaster recovery solutions.
• Influences architecture decisions (hot standby, warm backup, cold storage).
• Sets stakeholder expectations during incident response.
• Drives runbook design and team readiness.

How to determine RTO

• Identify revenue loss per hour of downtime for each critical system.
• Review SLA commitments to customers and partners.
• Factor in compliance penalties for extended outages.
• Consider cascading dependencies between services.
• Test recovery procedures regularly to validate RTO targets are achievable.