Helios Dental Group
Multi-site outpatient dental clinics · Munich, Germany (14 clinics in Bavaria) · 190 employees
Clinic web properties on Pro-tier log aggregation and automated backup scheduling for five distributed instances.
- RPO
- 24 hours for full backups; 15-minute transaction-log backup on SQL Server
- RTO
- 2 hours for practice-management; 8 hours for full imaging volume
- SLA
- Pro tier: centralized log sync and backup schedule alerts; priority email within 8 business hours
Situation
Clinic practice-management and imaging systems were hosted on ageing on-premises servers with local USB backups. A ransomware incident at a peer practice in 2025 prompted the medical director to require off-site encrypted copies, patch evidence, and a 24/7 contact for outages that stop chair-side work. Data is special-category personal data under GDPR Article 9.
Environment
- Region and placement
- Private cloud in Nuremberg plus encrypted off-site replica in Frankfurt
- Hosts
- 6 servers (practice management, DICOM imaging, file, domain, backup, jump)
- Operating systems and runtime
- Windows Server 2022; Debian 12 for the backup target
- Data stores
- 9.1 TB imaging; 420 GB practice-management database (SQL Server 2019)
- Connectivity and access
- Site-to-site VPN from each clinic; MFA on administrative access; no direct RDP from the internet
Agreed scope
- Named infrastructure engineer and 24/7 telephone support for P1 clinic outages
- Encrypted daily backups with a 30-day retention and monthly restore evidence
- Patch windows aligned to clinic closing hours (Tue 21:00–23:00 CET)
- Hardening: Credential Guard, restricted RDP, application allow-listing on the imaging host
- Written processing record to support the client's GDPR Article 28 documentation
Work performed
- Moved backups from USB to an isolated Debian target with restic, repository encryption, and immutable 7-day snapshots.
- Disabled internet-facing RDP; introduced a jump host with hardware-key MFA for Veltis and client administrators.
- Applied outstanding cumulative updates; established a monthly change calendar signed off by the practice IT lead.
- Documented restore of a single clinic's SQL database in 28 minutes during the April 2026 drill.
- Issued quarterly configuration and patch reports used in the group's insurer questionnaire.
Measured results
Backup target
Encrypted off-site, immutable 7 days
Internet-exposed RDP
Removed
Chair-side P1 response (last 6 months)
Median 9 minutes
Restore drill (SQL)
28 minutes
Service tier: Distributed Node Telemetry & Log Sync. Commercial inquiries: contact operations.