The maximum amount of data, measured as time, that an organization can afford to lose in a disruption.
The Recovery Point Objective defines how much recent data loss is tolerable, expressed as the time between the last usable backup and the moment of disruption. An RPO of one hour means losing up to an hour of data is acceptable.
RPO directly shapes backup and replication frequency: the smaller the RPO, the more often data must be captured or replicated.
Related frameworks