Don’t Get Caught Off Guard: How to Calculate Your Recovery Time Objective?

---

Did you know that more than 72% of businesses are not equipped to fulfill their Recovery Time Objective (RTO) expectations?

Incidents and disasters can occur at any time and derail businesses quite easily. And organizations must safeguard themselves against theft, power outages, corrupted hard drives and servers, ransomware, cyber attacks, and natural disasters. 

But how do businesses know if they can handle these situations? How do they know if their IT infrastructure is able to recover in time and minimize downtime impact? And how do they replicate data for a near-zero loss?

This is where RTO, The Recovery Time Objective, comes in. RTO is the longest time an application, computer, network, or system can be offline after an unexpected disaster, failure, or security event. It defines the maximum time allowed for restoring normal service levels and resuming typical operations after the disruption.

In this article, we’ll discuss establishing a Recovery Time Objective based on your application priority and the budget and resources you need to allot to ensure you achieve them. 

TL;DR

RTO defines the maximum allowable downtime for your systems and processes, ensuring your business can bounce back with minimal impact.

Proper calculation of RTO involves identifying critical systems, assessing the impact of downtime, and setting realistic recovery targets.

Being prepared for different scenarios helps ensure that your recovery plans are foolproof.

Recovery Time Objective Definition

The Recovery Time Objective defines the maximum period that a computer system, network, or program can be down after a failure or disaster before the adverse impacts of downtime are felt. It is one of the most important metrics for measuring the amount of downtime your company can comfortably handle.

IT systems and infrastructure often need time to return to optimal operation after issues occur. Sometimes, they may fail and require intervention to get them running again. 

RTOs set the time limit for restoring services to prevent loss of business, reputational damage, and increased support requests. They help determine how quickly systems must be back online to avoid significant negative impacts.

How does the Recovery Time Objective work?

Recovery objectives define the parameters within which an organization must restore its systems and operations after a disruption to minimize negative impacts. 

Many factors impact a company’s RTO, like the criticality of systems, type of business, business continuity plan, and resource availabilities.

It starts with creating a detailed disaster recovery plan and includes a step-by-step guide to restoring operations within the defined RTO.

How do you calculate the Recovery Time Objective?

Once you know the maximum acceptable downtime for each system, you can figure out the RTO or Recovery Time Objective. The RTO is essentially the longest time it should take to get a system back up and running after an outage or disruption. To calculate it, just subtract the maximum acceptable downtime from when the outage or disruption occurred.

Each passing during downtime represents potential losses and missed opportunities. And so, it becomes vital to establish baselines and acceptable and achievable timeframes to restore normalcy and enable continuity. 

In this section, we’ll break down the steps to calculate your RTO accurately, ensuring you can bounce back swiftly and keep your business running. 

The steps are as follows:

1. Identify critical systems and processes

Determine which systems, applications, and processes are vital to your business operations. Identify the ones that would significantly disrupt your activities if unavailable. 

You don’t need a continuity plan for every asset in your organization, which could lead to unnecessary expenses. Although having a minimum downtime for all systems may seem beneficial in hindsight, it requires substantial funds, time, processes, and equipment.

Hence, focus on creating continuity plans for critical systems to avoid overcomplication and overspending. 

For example, if a tech payroll software goes down and takes 24 hours to restore, this downtime might be acceptable because productivity doesn’t halt without it. 

However, productivity stops if the same company’s online ticketing system, used to track and address customer requests daily, fails. Without this system, they can’t communicate with customers.

The key considerations for critical systems are:

• How often do you use the system
• The potential losses if the system goes down
• The maximum downtime before losses become unacceptable
• The amount of data you need to retain
• The acceptable level of risk for the system and its data
• The legal risks of losing the system or its data
• Whether the data can be recreated
• How the system and its data help maintain industry compliance

2. Assess the impact of downtime

Downtime can significantly impact businesses across industries, leading to substantial financial, operational, and reputational losses. Estimates suggest that 5 to 20% of production is lost due to downtime, costing companies millions of dollars. Evaluate the effects of downtime on each critical system or process by considering the following:

• Lost revenue
• Decreased productivity
• Customer dissatisfaction
• Potential regulatory penalties

For example, a single mistake or human error can disrupt critical systems, causing immediate productivity and revenue losses and damaging the organization’s reputation. To mitigate human error, make sure to conduct frequent training sessions to educate your staff on best practices.

To comprehensively understand the impact, conduct a study analyzing best-case, worst-case, and middle-case scenarios. Here’s how:

1. Best-case scenario: Determine the minimum impact downtime could have. This scenario assumes quick recovery with minimal disruption. Evaluate what can be afforded without significant consequences.
2. Worst-case scenario: Assess the maximum potential impact. This scenario considers prolonged downtime, significant revenue loss, major customer dissatisfaction, and possible regulatory penalties. Identify what the business absolutely cannot afford.
3. Middle-case scenario: Consider a moderate impact scenario. This is a realistic situation where downtime causes noticeable disruption but is manageable. Determine what can be managed without severely affecting operations.

3. Determine acceptable downtime

Every business is susceptible to downtime. Downtime refers to the time that users/resellers of an IT service are unable to access their systems or perform up to expectations.

To determine acceptable downtime, define the tolerance level for each key system or process according to the impact analysis you performed previously.

You can recover from it Without too many negative ramifications for your business.

For instance, an average of 100 percent uptime of 99.95% means that it only permits a little over 4 hours for annual downtime, which could be suitable for most businesses.

However, some particular sites might need higher availability; conversely, some sites are visited by a few people and might be satisfied with 99% availability.

4. Analyze recovery capabilities

Take a hard look at your current disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities. How quickly can you restore each critical system or process with your existing resources and procedures?

This is why it is important to critically review your organization’s capability of recovering from such incidents—and the best way to do so is by conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).

Start by filling a BIA in form of a questionnaire and seek input from upper management and other stakeholders. Engage with the periodically to understand the possible consequences and impacts of their operations being disrupted.

5. Set RTO

Now, it’s time to determine your Recovery Time Objective based on your business needs. 

For example, if your maximum tolerable downtime is 6 hours, ensure you safeguard systems like exchange servers so they are set to recover within 4.5 to 5 hours. The extra time is for edge cases and complications. 

 

Examples of RTOs

Here’s a recovery time objective example of how you might calculate it:

Identify critical system	Online sales platform
Assess impact	Lost revenue: $10,000 per hour of downtimeCustomer dissatisfaction: High after 2 hours of downtimeReputational damage: Moderate after 4 hours of downtime
Determine acceptable downtime	Financially, the business can tolerate up to 3 hours of downtime without severe impact.Operationally, downtime beyond 2 hours starts affecting customer satisfaction significantly.
Consult stakeholders	Stakeholders agree that 2 hours is the maximum acceptable downtime
Analyze recovery capabilities	Current recovery procedures indicate it would take 3 hours to restore the platform
Set RTO	Aim to improve recovery capabilities to meet the 2-hour target or accept a 2-hour RTO while planning for improvements

Recovery Time Objective vs Recovery Point Objective: Key differences

RTO and RPO are both critical in disaster recovery planning but serve different purposes. While RTO refers to the maximum allowable downtime before operations are significantly impacted, RPO refers to the maximum allowable data loss measured in time.

Let’s see the differences in detail:

Criteria	Recovery Time Objective	Recovery Point Objective
Focus	Time to restore services	Data that must be recovered
Purpose	Minimize downtime and restore normal operations	Minimize data loss and ensure data integrity
Measurement	Time (e.g., minutes, hours)	Time (e.g., seconds, minutes, hours)
Example	If RTO is 4 hours, services must be restored within 4 hours of a disruption	If RPO is 30 minutes, data backup must ensure no more than 30 minutes of data is lost
Impacts	Operational and financial continuity	Data integrity and consistency
Planning	Focuses on system recovery and service resumption	Focuses on data backup and recovery
Tools and Strategies	Disaster recovery plans, failover systems	Backup solutions, replication, continuous data protection
Recovery techniques	System restore, failover procedures	Data backups, snapshots, data replication

Benefits of measuring Recovery Time Objective

Did you know that 93% of companies without a disaster recovery plan that suffer a major data disaster are out of business within a year? The benefits of RTO are immense because every minute of downtime not only costs money but also risks customer trust and market reputation. 

• A short RTO means less downtime, which translates to fewer lost sales and reduced financial impact
• Clearly defined RTO help ensure systems and services are backed up quickly so your business doesn’t grind to a halt for long
• Meeting your RTO targets shows customers you’re reliable, which can strengthen their trust and loyalty
• Meeting RTO requirements often aligns with industry regulations, keeping you on the right side of the law

Sprinto lowers your RTO

You should strive to lower your RTO because it ensures minimal disruption to business operations for both internal processes and customers. 

When your systems recover quickly, you avoid lost revenue and maintain customer satisfaction. Each second of downtime translates to potential financial loss, making a low RTO directly tied to revenue preservation.

Now, why does a GRC platform help you with lower RTO?

Sprinto, a GRC platform, helps you minimize downtime by continuously monitoring your critical systems and controls. Sprinto learns what’s normal in your environment and detects security anomalies across infrastructure, code, systems, and applications with accuracy. You can keep tab of all your critical controls on a comprehensive dashboard that alerts you when anomalies occur or controls are about to fail.

It incorporates automation, deeply customizable compliance modules, and a scalable architecture that adapts as you grow. As you scale and take on more risks, Sprinto accommodates additional controls, custom checks, and new frameworks without disrupting existing compliance.

Interested to know more? Let’s get on a call.

FAQs

What is RTO in Disaster Recovery?

RTO in disaster recovery is the amount of time where a business process must be restored after a disastrous event to avoid consequences from the disruption. Essentially, it’s the maximum time a system or process can be down without causing significant issues.

What is the RTO for critical process?

The RTO for critical processes is typically very short, often less than 24 hours, because these processes are essential to the business’s operation.

What role does a GRC platform play in managing RTO? 

A GRC platform helps manage RTO by continuously monitoring critical systems, providing real-time alerts for anomalies, and automating compliance checks to ensure quick recovery and minimal disruption during a disaster.

What happens if the RTO is not met? 

If the RTO is not met, the organization may face prolonged downtime, leading to significant operational, financial, and reputational damage. 

What is Recovery Time Actual?

RTA is the actual amount of time it takes to restore a system, application, or process after a disruption. Unlike the RTO, which sets the maximum acceptable downtime, RTA measures the real-world time taken to get everything back up and running.