IT emergency: A day without email, video calls and the cloud

IT emergency: The scenario

It happens on a Tuesday. At eight o’clock in the morning, the coffee is brewing whilst the laptop boots up. But unlike usual, the email inbox remains empty, and even refreshing the page doesn’t help. The link to the 8.30 am video conference leads nowhere. The proposal that the potential client is expecting today is inaccessible in the cloud. The calendar and address book have also disappeared.

After a few minutes, it becomes clear to the teams: it is not just a single service that is malfunctioning, but the entire digital workplace has ground to a halt – and with it, the communication platform through which the company communicates internally and externally and manages its files.

The cause could be a cyberattack, a major technical failure, blocked access or a licence suspension. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a cyberattack is the most likely scenario: In 2025, the BKA recorded 333,922 cases of cybercrime in Germany. Bitkom e. V. estimates the economic damage caused by cyberattacks at 202.4 billion euros. According to the BSI and the BKA, around 80 % of all cyberattacks and 90 % of ransomware incidents targeted SMEs, as their defences are often weaker than those of large companies with their own specialised cybersecurity teams.

What scenario unfolds once it becomes clear that the primary communication platform has failed? Let’s walk through the day:

From an IT disruption to a communications crisis

8.30 am: Nobody knows what’s going on.

In the first 30 minutes, confusion reigns amongst staff: they are searching for the cause and wondering who is responsible and how to contact that person. Meetings within the team and with customers and partners are cancelled. Customers and partners are left waiting without an explanation.

There is still no central assessment of the situation and no official information – neither internally nor externally. In the office, people are exchanging information in the corridor. Colleagues working from home end up in a hastily created WhatsApp group to discuss how to deal with the cancelled client appointments. Staff try to contact partners via their private LinkedIn accounts. Both approaches are unprofessional and not GDPR-compliant. The company is still functioning, but only through in-person contact and informal channels.

10.00 am: The crisis team is looking for a room.

After two hours of IT disruption, a significant proportion of the workforce is effectively unable to work. Operations in the office and on the production floor have ground to a halt because information is no longer flowing. So far, no one can estimate how long the outage will last.

The crisis management team, split between the office and those working from home, now needs to come together. But through which channel should they do so, when the usual ones aren’t working? And where, in fact, is the contingency plan? If the answer is ‘on the cloud drive’, it is currently just as inaccessible as everything else.

In the hours that follow, the IT team searches for solutions, managers improvise without a shared understanding of the situation, and the first signs that something is going wrong at the company begin to appear on social media.

5.00 pm: It’s only been one working day, but the costs are already mounting.

By the end of the working day, the damage has mounted up, as orders are left unprocessed, deadlines are missed, and every hour of downtime leads to a loss of trust and work that the teams will have to catch up on later. Staff feel unsettled, isolated and frustrated. They feel that, whatever they do, they can only make mistakes: whether by doing nothing or by resorting to shadow IT.

Customers who were left in the lurch that day or did not receive a reply will draw their own conclusions. A subsequent explanation of the IT disruption only partially repairs the damage to the company’s reputation. If the outage persists, there is a risk of lost revenue, breach of contract and a loss of position in the supply chain. For a small or medium-sized enterprise with limited staff and financial reserves, such an outage can quickly become a matter of survival without suitable and secure fallback options.

And there is another clock ticking: organisations falling under NIS-2 must report a significant security incident within 24 hours. This, too, requires functioning communication channels. It may be only now that senior management is realising what personal liability under NIS-2 means for them.

Everyone is affected by a system failure: senior management and production, IT and sales, customer service and HR. If the communication system fails completely, no department is spared. This is precisely why the statement ‘cyber security is an IT matter’ falls short: in an emergency, the ability to communicate determines whether the entire company remains capable of functioning.

The same IT emergency all over again – but with EVAC from mailbox

It’s Tuesday, eight o’clock – and once again the inbox is empty; once again, the meeting link leads nowhere. But this time, everyone knows what to do, because the emergency scenario has been practised: at the touch of a button, IT activates EVAC, the secondary communication platform from mailbox. It was set up long before the outage, remains inactive during normal operations and is completely independent of the primary system. Within a short space of time, staff are granted access to their emergency mailboxes.

The crisis management team meets via video conference. The up-to-date emergency plan is available in EVAC. The calendar, address book and task management tools are ready for use. Customers and partners receive a brief, pre-agreed update via email. This confirms the company’s trustworthiness, reliability and professionalism. The NIS-2 notification can be prepared without anyone having to resort to private messaging apps. Thanks to the secondary communication platform, the company remains operational whilst IT restores the primary system.

Update your business continuity strategy

Do you have a plan and the tools to remain operational during the first few hours and days of an IT outage? Build resilience during quiet times so that you can communicate and act effectively in an emergency. In doing so, you not only ensure your ability to operate, but also maintain your credibility with customers and partners.

When selecting your secondary communication platform, consider the following criteria:

• In addition to email inboxes, the emergency solution should also cover video conferencing, cloud storage, office tools, an address book, a calendar and task management.
• The secondary communication platform must be completely independent of the primary provider. Particularly in times of geopolitical crises, it should also be digitally sovereign, i.e. independent of US infrastructure.
• To ensure that no procurement, installation or complicated set-up is required in the event of an IT emergency, the business continuity solution must be ready for immediate use and accessible via a web browser.
• Look for proven reliability in data protection and information security, to ensure your communications are GDPR-compliant and secure.