Setting RPO and RTO for an AI Governance Proxy Policy Store and Audit Logs

Why one disaster recovery target fits neither component

The policy store decides what the proxy permits, so its RPO is about restoring the correct, intact policy version, and its RTO is bounded by what the proxy does while the store is unavailable. Audit logs record what the proxy decided, so their RPO follows your evidentiary obligations, and their RTO depends on whether the proxy can buffer records safely.

Because the two components serve different purposes, treat them as two recovery problems with separate targets.

Two stateful components, two recovery problems

Classify each component by failure impact

Assess each component by what its failure affects. A policy store failure affects what the proxy permits. An audit log pipeline failure affects the record of what the proxy decided. Those different impacts are why the targets should not be shared.

Derive and document targets for each component

Derive each value from failure impact, and write down the reasoning along with the number so the targets can be reviewed and compared with drill results.

Choose replication, backup, and failover patterns

Select replication, backup, and failover patterns separately for each component, so that each pattern can meet that component's own RPO and RTO.

Define fail-open and fail-closed behavior before the outage

Decide what the proxy does when either component is unavailable before an outage happens. For the policy store, this behavior bounds the RTO. For audit logs, the choice depends on whether records can be buffered safely.

Plan recovery testing that verifies the targets

• Run drills for each component separately, then together, because combined failures expose dependencies that single tests miss.
• Measure achieved RPO and RTO from timestamps and compare them with the documented targets, not with expectations.
• After restoring the policy store, confirm the active policy version matches the last approved release and passes its integrity check.
• Replay a set of known allow and deny test requests to confirm that enforcement outcomes match the expected policy.
• After log recovery, check sequence numbers or hash chains for gaps and confirm retention and access settings were restored.
• Exercise fail-open and fail-closed paths on purpose, and record what the proxy actually did for each risk tier.