What does RPO stand for in disaster recovery planning?

• A. Recovery Point Objective
• B. Restore Point Objective
• C. Recovery Point Occurrence
• D. Recovery Phase Objective

Answer: (A)

RPO stands for Recovery Point Objective, and it represents the maximum amount of data loss the organization is willing to accept in a disruption. It answers: how far back in time can data loss go? This drives how often you back up data or replicate it to a secondary site. For example, if the RPO is 15 minutes, backups must occur at least every 15 minutes so that the most you could lose is 15 minutes of data. This concept is different from RTO, which is about how quickly you need to restore services, not how much data you might lose. The other options don’t reflect established disaster recovery terminology: there isn’t a standard “Restore Point Objective,” nor a “Recovery Point Occurrence” or a “Recovery Phase Objective.”