Recovery Time and Data-Loss Objective Check

Worked example

A service owner can check the elapsed time to verified restoration separately from the age of the last consistent recovered data. Record each timestamp and the target used.

A fictional service is verified after 220 minutes against a 240-minute recovery target. The latest consistent recovered record is 80 minutes old at the outage, missing the 60-minute data-loss target.

Try it yourself

The calculator opens with the fictional example already filled in. Change one input, choose Calculate locally, and compare the result to the original values below. Use Reset fictional fixture to start over.

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Verified restoration time 220 minutes
Recovered data gap 80 minutes
Elapsed time at assessment 240 minutes

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Calculator

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Comparison conditions and human review

Equal-resource comparison conditionsRecord budget, staffing, resources, information release dates, scenario conditions and evaluation criteria. Material differences can make options not comparable.

Evaluation period

Geography / exercise boundary

Human reviewers and roles

This evaluation depends on a real transaction

Supplied human authority gateThis declaration is not legal certification. Blocked, pending or assumed gates stop transaction-dependent evaluation.

Keep units consistent within each table. Enter zero when the amount is known to be zero. Leave optional amounts blank when they are unknown. If a required value is missing, the calculator will ask for it.

Advanced: complete input envelope and optional fields

Edit optional fields using the method dictionary. Apply validates and recalculates the entire input. Unknown values remain null.

Versioned input JSON

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Workbench JSON / input envelope

CSV target table

CSV file, matching the target table headers

Compare the arrangements

Keep physical resources and evaluation conditions equal. With identical inputs, all three approaches produce identical arithmetic. The comparison refuses material differences in declared conditions; it does not verify those declarations.

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Executive brief and reproducible export

Public exercise notes

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Method, inputs and limits

Compare verified restoration and the latest consistent recovered record with declared recovery targets. Method version 0.2.0. Predict restoration or certify that a service or restored record is consistent.

CORE-021 input dictionary
Input	Unit / type	Required interpretation
outageAt — Outage began	ISO timestamp / number	Use an explicit UTC offset or Z.
asOf — Assessment time	ISO timestamp / number	Fix the clock for reproducible checks. It must be at or after the outage.
verifiedAt — Service restoration verified	ISO timestamp or null / number	Null means verification is still unknown.
recoveredRecordAt — Latest consistent recovered record	ISO timestamp or null / number	Use a verified point at or before the outage. Null means the data-loss interval is unknown.
rtoMinutes — Recovery time objective	minutes / number	Largest permitted time from outage to verified restoration.
rpoMinutes — Recovery point objective	minutes / number	Largest permitted gap between the recovered record and outage.

Visible mathematics / decision rules

Elapsed restoration minutes = (verified restoration − outage time) ÷ 60,000 milliseconds.

Recovered data gap = (outage time − latest consistent recovered point) ÷ 60,000 milliseconds.

What this result cannot establish

A target is met when the observed value is at or below it.
An unverified restoration can be overdue. The actual restoration time remains unknown.

What would falsify the assumptions?

Reconcile the outage clock, test completion and recovered record against the incident log.
Assumptions fail if the supplied definitions, units, period, scope or source records are wrong or incomplete.
An independent source audit or replication may contradict an input or the recorded dependency.
This method creates no resources. Physical conservation is checked in the inventory and transfer ledgers; descriptive graphs and checklists are not resource-flow models.
The same equations and review checklist can be reproduced with a spreadsheet or structured human-only process.
This is deterministic arithmetic, a descriptive comparison or a structured governance check, not a fitted causal effect or forecast. Fictional inputs remain an exercise.
Equal or worse measured errors, net review effort, disclosure burden or fallback under MAR would show no added benefit or added risk; no improvement is assumed.

Reproducible fictional fixture and independently calculated expectations

This fixture is synthetic. It does not describe a country, government, company or event.

{
  "observations": {
    "unit": "minutes",
    "origin": "synthetic",
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "SYN-021",
        "kind": "synthetic",
        "label": "Fictional continuity exercise",
        "url": null
      }
    ],
    "outageAt": "2026-01-01T08:00:00Z",
    "asOf": "2026-01-01T12:00:00Z",
    "verifiedAt": "2026-01-01T11:40:00Z",
    "recoveredRecordAt": "2026-01-01T06:40:00Z"
  },
  "parameters": {
    "rtoMinutes": 240,
    "rpoMinutes": 60
  }
}

Expected checks

{
  "restorationMinutes": 220,
  "dataGapMinutes": 80,
  "rtoStatus": "met",
  "rpoStatus": "missed"
}

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Authoritative background references

NIST: Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 — Outcome taxonomy, not a calculated national risk score. Reviewed 2026-11-09. Reference, not endorsement or validation.
NIST: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems (SP 800-34 Rev. 1, updated) — Background for recovery time and recovery point objectives. Reviewed 2026-11-11. Reference, not endorsement or validation.

These sources inform definitions or review practices. They do not validate this implementation or endorse MAR.

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