Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) Practice Exam

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is a key metric used in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. It specifically measures the maximum acceptable amount of data loss that can occur due to an incident, expressed in time. This means RPO defines the point in time to which data must be restored after a disruption. For instance, if the RPO is set to four hours, this indicates that the organization can tolerate losing data that was created in the four hours leading up to the incident; anything older than that is considered acceptable to lose.

Understanding RPO is crucial for organizations as it helps them determine how often they need to back up their data. A shorter RPO necessitates more frequent backups to minimize potential data loss. The other choices, while related to recovery strategies, focus on different aspects: the maximum time for restoration is more aligned with Recovery Time Objective (RTO), total downtime pertains to the overall impact of the disaster, and backup frequency reflects operational practices rather than data loss tolerance as defined by RPO. Thus, recognizing RPO helps in striking a balance between data recoverability and operational efficiency in data management.