Mind the Gap – Why Your OS Anti-virus Does Not Protect Your SAP Data

An organization’s SAP environment is a large, sprawling landscape with all sorts of third-party applications and customizations. With expansive capabilities come extended attack surfaces that malicious actors may try to take advantage of. Companies must take every precaution to ensure that their entire SAP landscapes are protected from viruses and other threats.

All too often, companies believe that they can rely on standard solutions provided by SAP or their operating systems to protect themselves from cyberattacks. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Organizations should ensure that they have the proper protection to protect their SAP landscapes.

Bolstering SAP Protection

Most major anti-virus solutions implement a series of controls, scanning files that are read or written within the Operating System (OS), as well as performing scheduled scans on a regular basis. These basic attacks are important to repel, but SAP systems feature unique vulnerabilities.

To help companies understand the potential gaps in their OS anti-virus protection, the SAP cybersecurity experts at bowbridge highlighted some of the key considerations that organizations should consider when developing their cybersecurity posture.

Uploads – Attackers can smuggle malware into SAP applications like FIORI, CRM, and more, as users establish an encrypted connection upon the upload. This encryption can shield the malicious program from standard anti-virus programs.

Proprietary Data Repositories – When an SAP application stores a file in an SAP-proprietary data repository, Standard OS level anti-virus software is unable to detect any threats within that repository. Even vulnerability shielding cannot help at this point, as the malware lies dormant, waiting to be retrieved.

Overcoming Vulnerabilities

To overcome these OS-level vulnerabilities, many SAP organizations are turning to bowbridge to add complementary anti-virus programs that deliver SAP-specific security. The bowbridge Anti-Virus for SAP Solutions has specialized capabilities to detect these specific vulnerabilities that other options can overlook.

The solutions that bowbridge provides have been specifically developed to secure SAP environments, rigorously tested for effectiveness, and officially certified by SAP itself to deliver security.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

With so much critical information stored within SAP systems, cybersecurity should be of paramount importance for all SAP organizations. A security breach that gives attackers access to personal identification information, login credentials, or critical financial information can cost companies millions of dollars in damages – not to mention the incalculable damage to the company’s reputation and relationships.

While OS-level anti-virus programs offer significant protection against these attacks, SAP environments have unique security needs and challenges. This is why many SAP organizations are turning to partners like bowbridge – to ensure that SAP-specific security challenges are addressed by anti-virus solutions designed specifically to protect SAP landscapes and all of the vital data contained within