The period of time within which systems, applications, or functions must be recovered after an outage (e.g. one business day). RTOs are often used as the basis for the development of recovery strategies, and as a determinant as to whether or not to implement the recovery strategies during a disaster situation. Similar Terms: Maximum Allowable Downtime

RTO is the maximum acceptable length of time that can elapse before the unavailability of a business function severely impacts the business entity. The RTO is comprised of two components: a) the time before a disaster is declared, during which time the impact begins, is recognized and is identified, and b) the time to perform the tasks documented in the disaster recovery plan for resumption of the critical business functions.

The projected length of time after a data disaster to fully restore all data and business processes.

Risk Risk Analysis