Service level agreement #
EthicsPortal commits to a monthly availability target for the reporter and operator portals. This page states the target, how it is measured, and what is excluded.
Last updated: 2026-05-17.
This SLA is the standard offering. A regulated-customer order changes it only where a bilateral signed order expressly identifies the replacement target or remedy. Public status and incident pages are operational disclosures, not admissions of liability or amendments to this SLA.
Availability target #
99.5% monthly uptime for:
- The whistleblower reporting channel — the surface where reporters submit and follow up on cases.
- The operator and handler portal — the surface where designated handlers access and work cases.
99.5% monthly allows approximately 3 hours 36 minutes of unplanned downtime per calendar month.
The marketing site and documentation are best-effort and not covered.
Measurement #
Uptime is measured monthly as the percentage of minutes during which the covered surfaces respond to HTTP requests with a non-error status. Measurement is taken from an external monitoring service, not self-reported.
What counts against availability #
- Outages of EthicsPortal application infrastructure.
- Outages of a subprocessor (hosting, email, object storage) that degrade a covered surface.
- Security incidents requiring a covered surface to be taken offline.
Subprocessor outages are not excluded. The commitment reflects what operators and reporters actually experience.
Exclusions #
Availability is measured excluding:
- Planned maintenance announced at least 48 hours in advance. Scheduled outside European business hours and typically under 30 minutes.
- Force majeure — regional internet disruptions, natural disasters, failures of DNS or certificate authorities outside our vendor chain.
- Unauthorized use or abuse requiring protective measures such as rate limiting or account suspension.
Recovery objectives #
In a disaster-recovery scenario, EthicsPortal targets:
- Recovery point objective (RPO): 24 hours. Data written within the 24 hours preceding a catastrophic failure may be lost.
- Recovery time objective (RTO): 4 hours. We aim to restore the covered surfaces to a working state within four hours of a declared incident. This is an objective, not a guaranteed recovery time. The current database-restore drill has not demonstrated four-hour end-to-end recovery, recovery from a provider-wide outage, or recovery during operator incapacity.
Backup mechanism, storage location, retention, and restore-testing cadence are documented on the security page .
Downtime disclosure #
Live availability for the covered surfaces is published at secure.ethicsportal.eu/up .
Material outages are recorded in the incident register . Any outage exceeding two hours on a covered surface results in a register entry.
Monthly uptime figures are available to operators on request.
Service credits #
Standard plans do not include monetary service credits. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the customer’s exclusive contractual remedies for failure to meet the availability target are reasonable corrective action and, for a material or repeated failure that remains uncured after written notice, termination of the affected subscription with a pro-rated refund of prepaid fees for the unused period. This does not exclude a remedy that applicable law does not permit the parties to exclude.
All claims arising out of or relating to this SLA form part of the single aggregate liability cap in the Terms of Service ; no separate or additional SLA cap applies.
Questions #
For questions about availability or to request monthly uptime figures, contact support@ethicsportal.eu .
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