Which disaster recovery plan metric indicates how long critical functions can be unavailable before irreparable harm occurs?

The maximum allowable downtime (MAD) metric is essential for assessing how long an organization can tolerate the unavailability of critical services or functions without facing significant damage or loss. This metric helps organizations quantify the threshold of downtime that they can manage before experiencing irreparable harm, making it crucial for developing robust disaster recovery plans.

Understanding MAD allows businesses to plan effectively for disaster recovery by determining the amount of time they can afford to be offline. Organizations can use this information to establish recovery targets, strategies, and resources needed to restore services within the acceptable downtime limits.

The other metrics serve different purposes:

• The recovery point objective (RPO) focuses on data loss tolerance by determining how much data can be lost before operations need to resume.

• Mean time to switchover (MTS) evaluates the time it takes to switch operations to a backup system, which is more about operational efficiency than downtime tolerance.

• Recovery time objective (RTO) relates to the total targeted duration for recovery of functions after a disaster, which while related, does not specifically address the maximum period of downtime before harm occurs.

By understanding the parameters of MAD, organizations can strategically align their disaster recovery efforts to minimize risks and protect their critical functions.