How much can you afford to lose, and for how long?

Question 1: how much recent work can you lose?

This is the recovery point. If backups run nightly and the server fails at 4 p.m., everything since last night is gone. For some systems that is fine. For an order system or a busy shared folder, a day of lost work could be serious.

The answer sets how often backups need to run: daily, hourly or continuously.

Question 2: how long can you be down?

This is the recovery time. Some systems can be offline for a day without much harm. Others stop the business within an hour.

The answer sets how backups need to be stored and restored. Restoring a large server from the cloud can take a day or more. Starting a copy of it in the cloud can take minutes.

Every system gets its own answers

Email, accounting, the file server, your line-of-business application and your website may all have different answers. Getting them in writing, system by system, turns “we have backups” into a plan.

Cost and honesty

Shorter recovery times and smaller recovery points cost more. The point is not to make everything instant. It is to decide, in advance, what the business actually needs, and to be sure the backup delivers it.