What does MAD (Maximum Allowable Downtime) measure?

Maximum Allowable Downtime (MAD) specifically quantifies how long an organization can tolerate a system or service being down before it experiences significant negative impacts. It defines the maximum period during which the interruption can occur before it starts to critically affect business processes, operational effectiveness, revenue, customer satisfaction, or other critical functions.

In this way, MAD serves as a crucial metric in business continuity planning and disaster recovery strategies, helping organizations to prioritize resources and develop response plans. Understanding MAD allows decision-makers to implement appropriate safeguards and recovery solutions to minimize downtime and its consequences on the organization.

The other options address different aspects of downtime and recovery but do not accurately capture the essence of MAD. For instance, the time taken to recover from a disaster focuses on the recovery process rather than the acceptable duration of downtime itself. Similarly, time required to resume regular operations and the time for a full system backup pertain to operational and backup processes but do not define the threshold at which the downtime becomes critically damaging to the organization.