Business Impact Analysis - CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 - 5.2
Recovery Time Objectives and Planning for Outages
Understanding Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
- The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is a critical metric that defines the maximum acceptable downtime after an outage, indicating how long it will take to restore operations.
- An organization may not consider itself operational until both the database server and web server are functional; thus, RTO encompasses the time required to get these systems back online.
- The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) refers to the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. For instance, if an organization requires access to 12 months of customer data, this timeframe becomes its RPO.
Planning for Outages
- Effective planning involves understanding the average time needed to resolve issues, which includes diagnosing problems, acquiring replacement equipment, installing it, and configuring it properly.
- Organizations can influence their mean time to repair by investing in resources such as contracts with third-party vendors for quick equipment replacement or maintaining spare equipment on-site.
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- When purchasing new network equipment, organizations should consider the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)—an estimate of how long a system will operate before experiencing another failure.