The descriptions of the five pillars describe how cyber resilience is implemented into SAP Infrastructure as a Service to provide a fault tolerant and self-healing service, that can automatically recover from unwanted states. The five pillars of SAP Infrastructure as a Service are automation, operational excellence, security, reliability, and validation.
The Five Pillars of Cyber Resilience
Automation:
The automation pillar helps to ensure that systems are running efficiently, and cost optimized. SAP Infrastructure as a Service's overall architecture was built with automation in mind, which is ensured by using standardization, open-source products, and standards as well as through the elimination of single point of failures. Throughout the lifecycle of services or products, SAP internal processes and procedures identify the potential for optimization, which aims to provide its users the best cloud experience.
Operational Excellence:
The operational excellence pillar focuses on the monitoring of the services provided by SAP Infrastructure as a Service, as well as problems and incident management. By using automated testing in addition to operational monitoring of the environment, it is ensured that the services keep operating. In case of unexpected failures and problems, incident management help to reestablish normal operation within a short amount of time.
Security:
The security pillar deals with the protection of information and systems, as well as the separation of user data or systems. Confidentiality, integrity, and availability are the main drivers of the security pillar, which ensures that customer data is protected and available when needed. Different security solutions, like identity and access management or separation of data, as well as segmentation of systems and networks, ensure that customer data or systems are only available for the specified personnel. In addition, protection against different attacks, for example, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, ensure that the services are reachable.
Reliability:
The reliability pillar concentrates on keeping SAP Infrastructure as a Service operational. This is ensured by using workload distribution, automatic failover in case of disruptions, as well as recovery processes. This pillar tries to keep the service running and secures the availability of its data.
Validation:
SAP Infrastructure as a Service was architected and implemented by using various industry standards, best practices, and compliance programs. To prove that the processes and procedures as well as systems used within SAP Infrastructure as a Service adheres to these standards and best practices, SAP Infrastructure as a Service is regularly validated by independent external auditors, as well as internal resources.