RPO vs. RTO: Your disaster recovery planning starts here.
A story about two acronyms, real business impact, and picking recovery targets that fit your world.
Imagine your business is hit by a ransomware attack or a server crash. How quickly can you recover? How much data would you lose? These are the questions disaster recovery planning helps you answer — and two key metrics, RPO and RTO, are at the heart of it.
Let’s clear it up — in your language: budgets, downtime, and customer impact.
30-second version
How much data you can afford to lose when things break.
How long you can afford to be down before it hurts.
Lower targets cost more to achieve. Higher targets increase risk. The goal is a fit-for-business balance.
Your Downtime Deductible, Explained
Think of RPO and RTO like insurance deductibles. The lower your tolerance for loss or downtime, the more you’ll pay to protect it. It’s not about buying more fancy tools, it’s about understanding your comfort zone for risk.
When systems go down, it’s not just a “tech issue.” It’s payroll that can’t process. Orders that can’t ship. Client trust at jeopardy. Real-world impact that ripples through your entire business.
Ask yourself:
- 💬 What happens if no one can access email for the day?
Does communication stop? Do invoices still go out? Can leadership alert customers or vendors? - 💻 What if everyone’s computers are locked out for four hours?
Can production move forward manually? Are there paper order forms, or does everything live in one system? - 📁 What if your shared drive or cloud storage goes dark?
Could your team still access client files or contracts? Are there offline backups? - ⚙️ What if your ERP, donor system, or CRM crashes mid-day?
Who would know first? How would your team continue working until it’s back?
These are the real worries that keep IT up at night. It’s not all about data — it’s about how long your people ( & organization) can function without it.
Once you start mapping those “what if” moments, recovery targets stop feeling like IT jargon and start looking like an operations plan.
Run this 15-minute tabletop
Check the boxes as you go — the bar will fill.
Common Gaps SMB Organizations Overlook
You’ve mapped your disaster recovery targets. You know which systems matter most. You’ve even run a tabletop exercise or two.
That’s huge — most organizations never make it this far.
It’s not that there’s a lack of effort or care. It’s that recovery planning often lives at the bottom of the to-do list because it's not urgent....until it is.
With the basics mapped out, it’s time to check your plan for the blind spots most organizations overlook.- ⚠️ RPO and RTO were never actually defined.
Someone said “We back up nightly,” and everyone nodded — but no one confirmed what “acceptable loss” means for finance, sales, or production. - 🧪 Backups aren’t tested often enough.
You might have backups… but until you’ve restored one successfully, you don’t know if it’ll work when it matters. - 👤 Everything depends on one person.
When only one IT lead knows how to run the recovery process, you don’t have a plan — you have a person. - 🤝 No cross-department coordination.
Each team has different tolerance for downtime, but few organizations compare those expectations side-by-side. - 📣 Communication plans are missing.
When systems are offline, who notifies staff, clients, or vendors? How? With what tools?
The good news: these are all fixable. Getting clarity around your recovery goals doesn’t take months, it takes focus and the right conversations.
When mid-market companies define and test these pieces proactively, they’re not just more secure — they’re more confident.
Need a hand testing or writing your plan?