Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is a recovery-planning target for data. It asks: after an outage, how far back can the restored information be without unacceptable business impact? NIST defines it in terms of the point in time to which data must be recovered. An RPO of one hour means the recovery design should limit potential lost changes to roughly the preceding hour under the stated failure scenario.

RPO helps determine backup frequency, database replication, export schedules, and testing requirements. It is not a promise that every restore will succeed, and it should be based on the value of recent information. A lead form that generates time-sensitive enquiries may need a shorter RPO than an infrequently edited brochure page.

Do not confuse RPO with Recovery Time Objective (RTO). RPO concerns how much recent data can be lost; RTO concerns how quickly service should be restored. A site can meet its RTO and still lose too many orders if its backups are older than its RPO allows.