Strategic Management: Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

"Following a disaster, the amount of time that a system may be offline before it must be up and running." (Tom Petrocelli, "Data Protection and Information Lifecycle Management", 2005)

"The period of time within which systems, applications, or functions must be recovered after an outage (e.g., one business day). RTOs are often used as the basis for the development of recovery strategies, and as a determinant as to whether or not to implement the recovery strategies during a disaster situation." (Disaster Recovery Journal & DRI, 2007)

"This is a measure indicating how quickly after an outage IT infrastructure needs to be recovered to continue operations. The smaller the number, the quicker the solution must be able to be recovered." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"The intent to recover lost applications, within specific time limitations, to assure a certain level of operational continuity. Expresses the amount of time a business will tolerate the computing system (hardware, software, services) to be offline." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"An expression of the amount of time a business will tolerate the computing system (hardware, software, DBMS, services) to be offline." (Craig S Mullins, "Database Administration", 2012)

"in disaster recovery planning, the expected amount of time between the disaster, and when services are restored." (Bill Holtsnider & Brian D Jaffe, "IT Manager's Handbook" 3rd Ed., 2012)

"In disaster recovery planning, the total time one can allow for their systems to be offline." (IBM, "Informix Servers 12.1", 2014)

"The earliest time period and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster to avoid unacceptable consequences." (Adam Gordon, "Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK" 4th Ed., 2015)

"The target time set for resumption of product, service, or activity delivery after an incident. It is the maximum allowable downtime that can occur without severely impacting the recovery of operations or the time in which systems, applications, or business functions must be recovered after an outage (for example, the point in time at which a process can no longer be inoperable)." (William Stallings, "Effective Cybersecurity: A Guide to Using Best Practices and Standards", 2018)