RPO and RTO Explained With a Real Disaster Recovery Example
Help Net Security, Monday, October 19th, 2026
BlackBox Hosting's CEO explains RPO vs RTO, why every app needs its own targets, and why recovery should be tested quarterly.
In this Help Net Security video, Matthew Burden, CEO of BlackBox Hosting, explains that RPO is the most data you can afford to lose, measured in time, while RTO is the longest the business can stay down.
A backup does not guarantee fast recovery, and fast recovery is useless if the data is days old.
Every application needs its own targets, and a four-hour RTO means little until tested, so he recommends quarterly rather than annual tests.
He describes a customer with more than 1,200 VMs, a contractual one-second RPO and four-hour RTO, whose replicated environment starts in about 90 minutes in tests.