Elevating Access Management Through Automation

Maintaining appropriate access through robust Access Control protocols is one of the most significant jobs that a GRC team has. Ensuring that only properly provisioned members can access certain specific datasets and restricted areas within an SAP landscape can prevent internal threats and facilitates compliance with all relevant regulations.

By controlling who can access certain information or systems, businesses can prevent unauthorized users from causing harm, such as data breaches, fraud, or intellectual property theft. Access control also helps maintain operational efficiency by ensuring only authorized employees have access to the tools and resources necessary for their roles.

Additionally, it supports auditability, enabling companies to track and monitor activities, which is critical for compliance with industry standards and laws like GDPR or HIPAA. Ultimately, access control safeguards both business assets and customer trust.

Though companies often rely on SAP Access Control for their access needs, they may miss out on important automation of emergency access. This can cause time-consuming, error-prone manual processes for access requests, approvals, and documentation. It can also make logging inefficient, as change logs made for review are lengthy, and difficult to interpret, making it challenging for reviewers to verify their activities fully.

Elevating Access

To overcome these issues, many companies have turned to Pathlock and its Elevated Access Management module. This solution provides several key differentiators, including automation, comprehensiveness, and audit trails. These have proven to be essential in emergency access situations

Automation – Automating the entire access request process from submission through deprovisioning helps expedite the workflow and overcome challenges that arise. When users can request temporary access, receive prompt approval, and utilize access, this cuts down on manual effort.

Comprehensiveness – Pathlock’s solution covers not just SAP, but external systems like SAP Ariba, Salesforce, and PeopleSoft. This ensures that users have their entire SAP ecosystem covered in the same level of control.

Audit Trails – Businesses need a clear and concise picture of the activity that has taken place, reviewers can understand which activities have been performed under elevated access. When audit logs are simplified and more accessible, users can efficiently verify compliance without wading through overwhelming data.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Manual Elevated Access Audits Are Cumbersome: Managing elevated access manually is time-consuming, error-prone, and often leads to incomplete documentation, increasing the risk of audit failures. Organizations should seek out solutions with automation embedded within. This not only reduces the time they take, but can help catch any potential issues as well.

Pathlock Automates and Streamlines Audits: Pathlock centralizes and automates the process, including access requests, approvals, change logs, and audit trails, making audits more efficient and reducing the chance of missed documentation. This frees up GRC teams to spend time on other important tasks. It also ensures that auditors have a robust trail to work with.

Improved Compliance and Reduced Costs: Pathlock ensures timely reviews with automated reminders and escalations, reducing audit time and costs while enhancing overall compliance by providing a standardized and transparent approach to elevated access management. A standardized approach helps to ensure that there are no gaps that develop in between the ways that different areas of an organization or team members operate.