RTO: Restore Time Objective; if a system fails, how many minutes/hours/days will it take to restore? RTO is a requirement the business establishes and systems are designed to meet the RTO, like an internal SLA for timeliness on getting the system back up with data online. Then the system is designed and implemented to meet this and other requirements. RPO: Restore Point Objective; when a system is recovered after a failure, how much data do we lose? Just the last hour? The last two days? RPO is a requirement the business establishes regarding how up-to-date a system will be after it is restored.