Why SAP Data Security Is Always Business Critical

While backup is often unpopular among IT staff, it has become increasingly important for a variety of reasons. Legal requirements, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are now more challenging to meet than ever before. Furthermore, the threat of data loss due to logical errors (human error, viruses, ransomware attacks, etc.) or even physical system failures (due to power outage, natural disasters, etc.) endangers business continuity. If the necessary corporate data is no longer available, almost everything immediately comes to a standstill.

A study by the META Group shows that even a 10-day downtime of key IT systems (including SAP systems) damages a company so significantly that its probability to disappear from the market within 5 years rises to 50 percent. Further studies show that 93 percent of companies that have had to operate without a functioning datacenter and the inherent data for at least 10 days as a result of a total breakdown usually file for insolvency within one year. Consequently, data availability and security are the most important resource of any company.

CRM and ERP systems are usually at the heart of a company’s IT landscape and are therefore business critical. Therefore, these systems—such as SAP, Salesforce, etc.—must be handled and secured with great care to ensure business continuity. A high level of security, especially in case of logical errors, can only be provided by high-performance, consistent, and reliable backup/recovery solutions.

It’s important that the data protection solution can be used in different environments, i.e. for on-premises and cloud deployment and on physical and virtual infrastructures. Ideally, the backup solution backs up multiple hypervisors, as companies often deploy multiple virtualization platforms. This will provide the flexibility to deploy CRM and ERP systems as needed and to quickly respond to changes.

Ensuring business continuity

In the event of logical errors, data can only be restored with a functioning backup in order to maintain business operations. Due to all the enthusiasm for high availability solutions and the almost seamless switch to another system if the first one fails, companies often forget that this technology only intercepts physical errors (disk crash, fire, etc.). However, logical errors cannot be fixed by this because any mistakes are immediately transferred to the second system containing the data replica. In these cases, only a backup solution can help to restore the data and ensure business continuity.

In general and especially regarding business-critical SAP systems, backup/recovery is indispensable. Ultimately, only efficient backup solutions ensure data availability and thus business continuity. Especially in times of global crisis, it is even more urgent to have functioning, certified SAP backup solutions.