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Recovery time objective (RTO)

nouncandidate·updated May 12, 2026

The maximum allowable downtime that can occur without severely impacting the recovery of operations or the time in which systems, applications, or business functions must be recovered after an outage (e.g. the point in time that a process can no longer be inoperable).

Framework senses

Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) IT Examination Handbook Infobase, Glossary1 senseview framework →
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The maximum allowable downtime that can occur without severely impacting the recovery of operations or the time in which systems, applications, or business functions must be recovered after an outage (e.g. the point in time that a process can no longer be inoperable).