The #1 Roadblock to RISE with SAP Success: A Secure-by-Design Guide

The #1 roadblock to a successful RISE with SAP transformation is failing to address security as a core part of the project. RISE with SAP is a “Business Transformation as a Service” (BTaaS) offering, but organizations that treat it as a simple technical migration without embedding security are at high risk. Research shows 70% of SAP S/4HANA migrations fail to meet their goals, and 52% of cloud migrations face delays due to security concerns. This guide provides the “secure-by-design” framework essential to realize the full benefits of what RISE with SAP is.

The “Securely” Imperative: Why Security Is the #1 Roadblock to Transformation

For many organizations, security is seen as the #1 roadblock to transformation. It’s a problem because many teams treat their RISE with SAP project as a simple “lift and shift” technical migration. This approach just carries forward years of unmanaged risk and technical debt into a new environment.

This strategy is practically guaranteed to fail. Research shows that 70% of SAP S/4HANA migrations fail to meet their intended timelines, budgets, or business objectives. When critical security issues are discovered too late, projects get hit with costly delays. The average cost of a failed, delayed, or scaled-back digital transformation project is a staggering $4.12M.

A true secure SAP modernization isn’t just about moving to the cloud. It’s about moving to the cloud safely, enabling agility, and ensuring your most critical business applications are protected from day one.

The Strategic Choice: Why ‘Lift and Shift’ Fails

The most common project failure is treating the move to RISE as a “technical migration” (a ‘Brownfield’ or ‘lift and shift’) rather than a true “business transformation” (‘Greenfield’). A ‘lift and shift’ doesn’t just move your data; it moves all your legacy risk, bad processes, and technical debt.

You Forfeit S/4HANA’s Core Value

A “lift and shift” wastes the new architecture. True transformation means redesigning processes to leverage new S/4HANA capabilities that are impossible in ECC, such as:

• The Universal Journal: This merges all finance (FI) and controlling (CO) data into a single table (ACDOCA). It’s a business revolution that enables a “continuous close,” providing real-time profitability analysis instead of forcing you to wait for batch reconciliations.
• The Business Partner Model: This consolidates “Customer” and “Vendor” master data into one “Business Partner” object. A ‘lift and shift’ of dirty legacy data will break this model from day one.

You Forfeit Agility with a “Dirty Core”

The second half of the transformation is the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), which enables a “Clean Core” strategy. The goal is to keep the S/4HANA core standard and build all new innovations on the BTP layer. This allows you to patch and upgrade your core with minimal disruption. A ‘lift and shift’ that moves all your old custom code into the new core repeats the mistake of the last 30 years and ensures your new system is just as rigid and expensive to maintain as the old one.

The ‘Silent Killers’ That Cause 70% of Failures

When a project goes over budget, it’s almost always due to underestimating the “technical debt” of the legacy environment. Beyond custom code, two “silent killers” commonly derail projects:

• Roadblock 1: ‘Dirty’ Master Data: Migrating “dirty” data (duplicates, inconsistent records, and missing attributes) is a root cause of many project failures. This is especially true for the new Business Partner model, which requires clean, harmonized customer and vendor data to function.
• Roadblock 2: Unmasked PII in Non-Prod Systems: A frequently overlooked roadblock is the practice of copying production data (which is full of unmasked Personally Identifiable Information) into your Dev, QA, and Test systems. In the age of GDPR and other privacy regulations, this is a severe compliance breach that can halt the entire migration if discovered mid-project.

A 3-Phase Framework for a Secure-by-Design RISE Transformation

To avoid the risks and delays, a successful RISE with SAP cloud migration requires embedding security into every stage. You can’t just “test for security” at the end. This 3-phase framework shows how to address the biggest challenges at the right time.

How to Operationally Support Your 3-Phase Framework

Applying this 3-phase framework isn’t a manual process. It requires specialized tools that provide the automation and visibility to manage risk across your entire project.

For Phase 1 (Get Clean):

To solve the significant custom code challenge, you need to scan your legacy ABAP. This is a core part of SAP DevSecOps, which involves using a tool like Onapsis Control to automate security checks, finding and fixing code vulnerabilities before they move to the cloud. This same process helps optimize legacy roles to cut licensing costs.

For Phase 2 (Stay Clean):

To address the 71% skills deficit and configuration risks, you need a continuous assessment platform. This involves SAP vulnerability management with a solution like Onapsis Assess. It validates all your new settings, including on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), against security best practices and compliance requirements using “comply packs” for regulations like SOX, GDPR, and NIST, providing a safety net for your SAP cloud environment.

For Phase 3 (Stay Secure):

To handle the 72-hour exploit window and $5M compliance cost, you need a two-part solution. First, Onapsis Defend provides SAP-specific threat intelligence from Onapsis Research Labs for real-time monitoring. Second, Onapsis Control shifts your automated SAP compliance strategy from a manual, periodic audit to an automated, always-on process.

• Crucially, this phase requires SOC Integration. Given that new exploits are weaponized in as little as 72 hours, manual monitoring is obsolete. It is a foundational requirement to connect S/4HANA to your enterprise SIEM (like Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel). Onapsis Defend uses S/4HANA’s Security Audit Log APIs to feed all critical events (failed logins, critical transaction use, etc.) to your SOC in real-time. An organization that goes live without this integration is essentially operating blind to modern application-layer threats.

Real-World Proof: How a Top 500 Utility Accelerated Its Transformation

This framework isn’t just theoretical. A Fortune 500 utility company faced these exact challenges during its RISE with SAP cloud migration.

Their Challenge

The company, a utility with over 2,000 employees and more than $2B in revenue, was migrating a twenty-year-old, on-premises SAP system. As a utility company, they faced unique cybersecurity challenges. They knew they were still responsible for application security under the SAP shared responsibility model, but their team required new skills to handle security and compliance in the cloud.

Their Solution

Instead of waiting, they chose a partner who could provide deep SAP security technology and expertise. They embedded the Onapsis Platform into their migration from the start to automate security and compliance checks.

Their Result

Security was not a roadblock; it was an enabler. By addressing security and compliance from day one, the utility achieved a secure, on-time, and on-budget project delivery with practically no delays.

The project’s results at a glance included:

• 75% Reduction in mean-time-to-remediate (MTTR).
• 50% Reduction in security investigation times.
• Significant time and cost savings achieved through automation and the elimination of manual processes.
• Centralized visibility across both legacy on-premise and new RISE with SAP systems.

Secure Your Transformation, Don’t Just Migrate

RISE with SAP is the engine for your SAP digital transformation, but a “secure-by-design” strategy is the fuel. The challenges are real, from complex custom code to migration delays, but they are all solvable.

As the utility case study proves, integrating security doesn’t slow transformation; it accelerates it. It gives you the confidence to go live on time and on budget by managing risk from day one.

Learn how Onapsis secures RISE with SAP and can help you secure your entire journey, from planning to go-live.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Will focusing on security delay our RISE with SAP migration?

No, it does the opposite. Research shows 52% of cloud migrations are delayed due to unexpected security concerns. By addressing security in the planning phase, you prevent last-minute, project-killing failures and accelerate your go-live.

How do we maintain SOX compliance in a RISE with SAP shared model?

You must shift from manual, periodic audits to continuous, automated monitoring. The average annual cost of non-compliance is $5M. Given those stakes, you can’t rely on manual checks. The solution is to use automated compliance tools that provide real-time visibility.

What is our security responsibility for custom code in the RISE model?

Under the SAP shared responsibility model, you (the customer) are 100% responsible for the security of your own applications and custom code. This is a top concern for organizations, as legacy code can be incompatible or expose new risks, and it’s essential to scan all custom code before you migrate it to the cloud.

What’s the biggest security risk in a RISE transformation?

The biggest risk is a combination of complexity and a skills gap. Organizations are overwhelmingly worried about their existing customizations, and 71% are concerned that a skills deficit will slow them down. This combination means that without an automated, secure-by-design strategy, it’s highly likely vulnerabilities will be migrated to the cloud, exposing the organization to risk from day one.