CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701)Security ArchitectureEasy
A company's disaster recovery plan states that after a critical outage, the order-processing application must be back online within 4 hours to avoid violating contractual SLAs. Which term describes this 4-hour requirement?
- AMean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- BRecovery Point Objective (RPO)
- CRecovery Time Objective (RTO)
- DMean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
RTO defines the maximum acceptable amount of time a system can be down after a disaster before it must be restored, which matches the 4-hour requirement described.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. MTBF measures average time between failures of a component, not recovery targets.
- B. RPO measures acceptable data loss in time, not restoration speed.
- D. MTTR measures the actual average repair time observed, not a planned objective.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
The maximum acceptable length of time a system or service can be down after a disruption before it must be restored.
- Set by business requirements/SLAs
- Drives DR site selection (hot/warm/cold)
- Measured in downtime duration, not data loss
Memory trick: RTO = Time to Turn it back On.