An organization requires that business critical applications be recovered within 30 minutes in the event of a disaster. Which of the following metrics should be defined in the business continuity…

Question

Options

• AMaximum tolerable downtime (MTD)
• BService level agreement (SLA)
• CRecovery point objective (RPO)
• DRecovery time objective (RTO)

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  7% (3)
• C
  5% (2)
• D
  86% (36)

Explanation

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the metric that defines how quickly a system must be restored after a disaster - in this case, within 30 minutes. It directly answers "how long can we be down?" and is the standard BCP metric for recovery speed requirements.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (MTD): Maximum Tolerable Downtime is the absolute outer limit before business viability is threatened - it's a ceiling, not a target. RTO must be ≤ MTD, but MTD isn't the metric you set to manage recovery speed.
• B (SLA): A Service Level Agreement is a contractual commitment to uptime/performance with customers or vendors, not an internal disaster recovery planning metric.
• C (RPO): Recovery Point Objective measures data loss tolerance (e.g., "we can't lose more than 1 hour of transactions") - it's about how far back in time you can restore, not how fast you restore.

Memory tip: Think RTO = Race The Clock (how fast you recover) vs. RPO = Rewind Point Only (how far back your data goes). Whenever a question mentions a time limit to restore operations, that's always RTO.

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