How much standstill can your company tolerate — and how many hours of data loss? There is no blanket answer to these two questions, but one per business process. That is exactly where business continuity begins at sector7: with a business impact analysis, from which tolerable downtimes and data losses are derived. Only then is technology dimensioned — so that you invest where standstill is genuinely expensive and save where it is bearable. In doing so, we orient ourselves to standards such as ISO 22301.
From business process to safeguarding
- Phase 1
Business impact analysis
We determine per process which downtime and which data loss are tolerable — together with the business departments, not just with IT. The result is documented recovery requirements as the yardstick for all further decisions.
- Phase 2
Backup dimensioned to that
Backup, redundancy, and recovery paths are geared to these requirements. Our backup practice is based on Veeam Backup & Replication: daily backups, incremental methods for short backup windows, immutable copies as protection against ransomware — stored on redundantly designed backup targets. Backup is performed to our own, geo-redundantly designed backup targets — the last copy never resides in only one place.
- Phase 3
Tested recovery
A backup that was never restored is a hope, not a concept. Restore tests are a fixed part of operations; every test is logged. The logs also serve as evidence for audits and insurers.
- Phase 4
Practiced emergency plan
The IT emergency plan describes roles, reporting paths, recovery sequences, and concrete technical steps for defined scenarios — from ransomware to the loss of a location. It is practiced regularly and revised after every test; a plan that only sits in a drawer is worthless in an emergency.
Your cloud data too: Microsoft 365 backup
Emails, SharePoint, and Teams are well operated at Microsoft, but not protected in the sense of a data backup — deleted is deleted, and responsibility for the data stays with you. On request we therefore also back up your Microsoft 365 data: Veeam-based, onto our own, geo-redundant infrastructure instead of into yet another third-party cloud.
Early warning and emergency
For managed environments, our 24/7 monitoring serves as an early-warning system: your systems are monitored automatically around the clock via our NOC; anomalies are detected, assessed, and handled according to contractually agreed urgency — often before a symptom becomes an outage. Should an emergency occur nonetheless, we support you according to the practiced plan until the return to stable business operation. For an acute IT emergency — even without an existing customer relationship — you will find the procedure on our emergency page at sector7.eu/it-notfall.
From practiceEight years of overall responsibility — through to the geo-redundant datacenter – to the references
Frequently asked questions
We already have a backup — is that not enough?
A backup is the foundation, but no guarantee of business continuity. What matters is whether recovery is tested regularly, whether backups are protected against ransomware, and whether there is a practiced plan for who does what in an emergency. These are exactly the gaps we check first — often backups exist that would be unusable, or far too slow, in an emergency.
How quickly are we operational again after an outage?
That depends on the specific system and the chosen safeguards — a blanket figure would be dishonest. In the business impact analysis we determine per process which recovery times and data losses are tolerable, and dimension backup, redundancy, and emergency plans precisely to that. This way you invest where standstill is genuinely expensive.
With what technology do you back up our data?
Our backup practice is based on Veeam Backup & Replication: daily backups, incremental methods for short backup windows, and regular restore tests as a fixed part of operations. The concepts are documented so that they also serve as evidence for audits and insurers.
What belongs in an IT emergency plan and how is it kept current?
An emergency plan describes roles, reporting paths, recovery sequences, and concrete technical steps for defined scenarios — from ransomware to the loss of a location. We create it on the basis of a business impact analysis and keep it current through regular tests and reviews, aligned with standards such as ISO 22301. A plan that was never practiced is worthless in an emergency.