Calculating RTO and RPO
Summarize
Summary of Calculating RTO and RPO
The BCM (Business Continuity Management) application in ServiceNow facilitates the calculation of Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) during the Business Impact Analysis (BIA). These metrics help organizations determine acceptable downtime and data loss thresholds for their business services and IT systems, enabling effective continuity planning.
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Before conducting a BIA, BCM administrators must configure impact ratings and assessment questions. Business users, IT analysts, and IT owners then respond to these questionnaires, which the application uses to compute RTO and RPO values.
BCM Setup and Workflow
- Impact Ratings Configuration: Administrators define impact categories (e.g., Legal, Reputation, Workforce, Regulatory) with associated impact ratings such as Low, Moderate, and High, each assigned numeric values (1, 2, and 3 respectively).
- Non-Tolerable Impact Thresholds: For each impact category, administrators specify which impact rating is non-tolerable, determining the disruption duration that sets the RTO.
- Assessment Questionnaire: Based on the configured impact ratings, tailored questions appear in the Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective assessment tabs within the BIA for users to complete.
- BIA Workflow: The BIA owner submits the analysis for review, during which respondents provide answers that drive the calculation of RTO and RPO.
Calculating RPO
The RPO score is calculated by identifying the highest response value across all RPO impact categories. This score is then mapped to a timeframe using a predefined Score Timeframe Mapping at the template level. For example, a score of 40 might correspond to an "Immediately" recovery point objective, indicating the maximum acceptable data loss duration.
Calculating RTO
The RTO score is derived by evaluating tolerable downtime values across RTO impact categories. The application:
- Determines the highest tolerable value per impact category.
- Calculates “Tolerable downtime” by selecting the impact rating with a value higher than this tolerable value or defaults to the maximum RTO defined.
- Uses the lowest tolerable downtime among all impact categories as the overall RTO score.
Example scenarios illustrate how different non-tolerable impact ratings influence the RTO calculation, ranging from hours to months depending on configuration.
Overall Impact Assessment and Recovery Tiers
When disruption durations for impact categories are updated, the BIA’s RTO is recalculated automatically, reflecting the lowest tolerable downtime. This recalculated RTO determines the organization’s Recovery Tier, which classifies service criticality. Examples of Recovery Tiers based on RTO include:
- Immediate to 8 Hours: Mission Critical
- 24 to 72 Hours: Business Critical
- 1 to 2 Weeks: Essential
- 1 Month: Non-Essential
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Enables structured and automated calculation of RTO and RPO for business and IT services.
- Supports consistent assessment through configurable impact ratings and questionnaires tailored to organizational needs.
- Facilitates ongoing risk management by dynamically updating recovery objectives as business impact data changes.
- Helps align recovery priorities with organizational risk tolerance and service criticality via Recovery Tiers.
The BCM application provides an assessment questionnaire for calculating the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) in the business impact analysis (BIA). As a pre-requisite to the BIA, the BCM administrator defines the impact ratings and sets up the assessment questions. After receiving the responses to the assessment, the BCM application calculates the RTO and RPO.
BCM dependency tree
Before calculating the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) in the business impact analysis (BIA), ensure that all the required BCM applications are installed. The following illustration depicts the BCM dependency tree which shows how the parent applications are consumed by the child applications.
BCM implementation
Setting up the impact ratings to evaluate an impact category is a crucial step in business continuity management. To grasp the importance of configuring these impact categories, refer to the steps needed for implementing the BCM process, as outlined in the checklist.
- BIA workflow
When a business impact analysis (BIA) owner submits the BIA for a review, the BIA is updated to the review state. The BIA owner responds to the questions in the assessment questionnaire. If you are an IT analyst or IT owner, you can estimate the recovery point objective for your data applications and systems by responding to the Recovery point objective assessment in the BIA. Based on the configuration set up by the BCM administrator, the questions are displayed in the Recovery point objective assessment tab of the BIA.
A sample BIA workflow is shown in the following example.
Responding to the assessments
The business users and IT owners perform business impact analysis by responding to the assessments in the BIA component in the BCM UIB Workspace. A sample view of the Assessments tab is shown in the following example.
If you are the IT owner, you can estimate the recovery point objective for your data applications and systems by responding to the Recovery point objective assessment in the BIA.
Administrator view for configuring impact category and ratings
The BCM administrators configure the assessment questionnaire to include one or more impact ratings such as Low, Moderate, or High for an impact category. The Impact
Ratings related list is displayed in the Impact Category record as shown in the following example.
- Low = 1
- Moderate = 2
- High = 3
Based on the configuration set up by the BCM administrator, the questions are displayed in the Recovery point objective assessment tab as shown in the following example.
Calculation of RPO score for the BIA with examples
Consider the following scenario where each question response has a numeric value. The application calculates the category score for each RPO impact category based on the highest response value.
The application selects the highest category score from all the RPO categories. In the following example, the highest category score is 40.
The application uses the Score Timeframe Mapping, defined at the template level, to determine the appropriate timeframe value. In the example, the category score is 40, which falls between the lower and upper threshold scores. The timeframe mapped to this score is "Immediately." Therefore, the system-calculated RPO value is "Immediately."
Recovery time objective assessment
If you are the business user, you can estimate the recovery time objective for your business services and processes by responding to the Recovery time objective assessment in the Assessments tab. The questions are displayed in the Recovery time objective assessment tab according to the configuration set up by the BCM administrator. A sample Recovery time objective assessment is shown in the following example.
Calculation of RTO score for the BIA with examples
Consider the following scenario where each question response is assigned a numeric value. The application identifies the highest tolerable value for each RTO Impact category.
The application then calculates the “Tolerable downtime” value for each RTO Impact category as the Impact rating with a value higher than the highest tolerable value. If no value exists, the application uses the maximum RTO value (that is defined at the Impact category) as the “Tolerable downtime.” The system calculates the RTO score based on the lowest “Tolerable downtime” value from all RTO impact categories.
In the following example, the RTO score based on the lowest “Tolerable downtime” value is 8 Hours.
Sample RTO calculation
| Scenario | Non-tolerable impact | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scenario 1 | In the Impact Ratings table, the Tolerable field is set to false. |
If the administrator has specified that Low regulatory impact is non-tolerable, its corresponding disruption duration is set as the recovery time objective (RTO). In this example, the disruption duration for the 01 - Low impact rating is set to 4 hours. Therefore, the recovery time objective (RTO) for the impact category is above 4 hours. Even if the moderate impact disruption duration is shorter, the calculation selects the value from the first alphanumerically sorted impact rating that has the Tolerable field set to false. |
| Scenario 2 | In the Impact Ratings table, the Tolerable field is set to false. |
If the administrator has specified that Moderate regulatory impact is non-tolerable, its corresponding disruption duration is set as the recovery time objective (RTO). In this example, the disruption duration for 02 - Moderate impact is set to 24 hours. Therefore, the recovery time objective (RTO) for the impact category is above 24 hours. |
| Scenario 3 | In the Impact Ratings table, the Tolerable field is set to false. |
If the administrator has specified that High regulatory impact is non-tolerable, its corresponding disruption duration is set as the recovery time objective (RTO) as shown in the following example. In the tabular example, the disruption duration for 03 - High impact is set to 72 hours. Therefore, the recovery time objective for the impact category is above 72 hours. |
| Scenario 4 | The Tolerable field for the Low, Moderate, and High impact ratings is set to true. |
If the administrator has set all the impact ratings as tolerable, the value specified in the Maximum RTO value field in the template is selected as the recovery time objective (RTO). In the following example, the administrator has set all the impact ratings as tolerable. Therefore, the recovery time objective (RTO) is one month according to the value specified in the Maximum RTO value field. |
- Calculation of overall impact assessment result for a BIA
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When you update the Disruption Duration of an impact category, the RTO of the BIA is automatically updated. The RTO of the BIA is set as the lowest tolerable downtime from each impact category.
For example, consider a BIA having four impact categories – Legal, Reputation, Workforce, and Regulatory. When you update the disruption duration value of the legal impact category, then the RTO value of the BIA is recalculated based on the lowest tolerable disruption duration from each impact category. The Recovery Tier varies from organization to organization and is set based on the recalculated RTO value.
RTO value Recovery Tier Immediate Mission Critical 1 Hour Mission Critical 4 Hours Mission Critical 8 Hours Business Critical 24 Hours Business Critical 72 Hours Essential 1 Week Essential 2 Weeks Non-Essential 1 Month Non-Essential