Data security in view

The conversion to in-memory technology with S/4 Hana involves many aspects, such as decommissioning the legacy systems, backing up the data and transferring it to the new system. In addition, there are also structural requirements that need to be considered and integrated; the ERP processes need to be adapted to the changed requirements from the specialist departments with increasingly digital business processes.

For SAP applications, the use of cloud will play an increasingly important role; this must also be taken into account in planning. The Corona crisis also plays a role in the changeover, as this involves slowing down and in some cases postponing projects, as well as adapting to home office requirements.

A reliable, certified data protection solution for mission-critical SAP systems is essential both before and after the transition, enabling disaster backup and recovery.

SAP systems require a comprehensive business continuity plan that focuses on Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) based on business needs and policies.

A certified hybrid backup and bare metal recovery solution is an important part of a solid business continuity plan. This ensures that SAP data is backed up before the changeover and is not lost during the changeover for whatever reason.

Only with a backup solution can the data be restored in the event of logical errors, as this is the only way to access the last non-corrupt dataset, which is not possible with a high availability solution.

With the changeover, the new requirements must be included, for example how the processes must look, on premises and/or in the cloud, physical and/or virtual environments, service level agreements (SLAs) and legal requirements (DSGVO). The important thing here is that data security can keep pace, which means choosing a backup solution that can cover all requirements.

It should be emphasized that the backup solution should be SAP-certified, as this is the only way to ensure original SAP support. In addition, a solution that can ideally back up the entire IT infrastructure is recommended, so that everything can be backed up with one backup tool, which greatly simplifies management. Companies often have more than one virtual platform, so a suitable backup solution should also support multiple hypervisors so that everything can be backed up from a single source here.

The cloud capability of the backup solution must not be forgotten either. Even if the cloud is not currently being used, there is a high probability that this will also happen in the SAP area in the near future, as an increasing trend towards the cloud is visible here.

It often even goes one step further by considering solutions from managed service providers (MSP) for the SAP applications and their backup. Due to the new circumstances following the ECJ ruling on the Privacy Shield agreement with the USA, care must be taken to ensure that the rules on data protection according to DSGVO are adhered to, which is most certainly guaranteed with German or European providers.

Another important aspect in the data security of backup solutions is that no backdoors are implemented in the software (as the USA can demand from American providers). There are German and European backup providers like SEP that guarantee that the software does not contain backdoors and is BSI-compliant - an important aspect regarding legal security.