Architecting IT

Data protection is a general term for ensuring data and information is recoverable in the case of loss from user error, malicious damage, infrastructure failure or software corruption.  It is typically delivered via some form of backup and disaster recovery processes.

RPO, or Recovery Point Objective describes the desired difference between data being recovered and data that was originally lost.  An RPO of zero indicates that data must be fully recovered to the point of failure with no loss of data.  Some systems can tolerate greater RPO, such as RPO=24 hours, where data can be recreated from another source.  Typically RPO is defined in minutes or hours.