What does recovery point objective (RPO) typically refer to?

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is fundamentally about the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. It defines the point in time to which data must be restored in the event of a failure or disaster. Thus, RPO reflects the maximum period that data can be lost without causing significant harm to the organization.

For instance, if an organization's RPO is set to 4 hours, this means that in the event of a disaster, the organization can afford to lose any data that was created in the 4 hours leading up to the incident. Therefore, RPO directly relates to how much data an organization is willing to lose, quantifying the allowable downtime before data loss becomes critical.

The other options, while related to recovery and operational continuity, do not accurately capture the essence of RPO. They address different aspects such as the timeframe for operations to come back online or system performance, but none specifically define what RPO aims to measure – that is, the time frame for acceptable data loss.