Ensure Protection of SAP systems from cyber attacks

Reading time: 2 mins

Meet the Authors

Key Takeaways

⇨ Robust cybersecurity measures need to be in place, to mitigate financial, operational, legal, and reputational damages caused by cyber-attacks, both internal and external

⇨ An incident response team must be prepared and ready to promptly detect, investigate, contain, and manage the response to cyber-attacks to minimize impact, meeting legal and regulatory requirements.

⇨ To prevent future attacks, ongoing efforts such as regular audits of SAP code, penetration testing, and timely application of security updates and patches must be a routine exercise for businesses to stay vigilant against such threats

External cyber-attacks have historically had serious consequences for a firm. This is because these types of attacks can cause financial, operational, legal and reputational damages. Such is the case with USIS, a US federal contractor for the Department of Homeland Security who were targeted by a cyber-attack, which led to confidential data of more than 27000 people getting leaked. This led to a massive fallout where USIS lost their contract with U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2500 employees were fired and USIS ultimately filing for bankruptcy.

Organization must ensure the safety of critical business systems, like SAP solutions. The average cost of an SAP security breach amounting to approximately $5 million per week. This highlights the importance of having concrete steps in place to protect and effectively respond to attacks. The first step that organizations must implement is to have a cybersecurity plan in place for when a threat is detected. This plan should involve steps from containing the breach to managing the incident response.

To ensure that the organization reacts in a coordinated manner to an attack there should be an incident response team consisting of cybersecurity analysts, IT staff, management, legal, and public relations representatives. This incident response team will be responsible for investigating the breach, coordinating the appropriate response and managing information flow between the firm and stakeholders.

Once an attack has been detected, it must be mitigated. This involves isolating the issue, investigating the origin, and assessing impact. In an attack against SAP systems, it may be necessary to update authorizations, apply security patches, or deleting or resetting accounts. Additionally, databases containing confidential data or customers’ personal information must be scanned to check for damaged or missing information. Securing enterprise networks and SAP systems must be the number one priority for the incident response team. Once there is confirmation that the breach has been contained, critical business functions need to be restored in a timely manner to avoid further loss in revenue and productivity.

The incident response team also needs to inform their customers of the attack and document all the steps they have taken to mitigate it. This is an extremely important step as doing otherwise could result in fines, legal action and reputational damage.

Lastly, the organization must work to prevent similar attacks in the future. This will involve regular audits of SAP ABAP code, conducting penetration testing against the enterprise, and ensuring patches and updates are applied to SAP systems in a timely manner.

Learn more about effective SAP cyber security solutions with Bowbridge

More Resources

See All Related Content