The Silent Killers of SAP Security: How to Shut Down Dormant and Unmitigated Access Risks

For too long, SAP Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) has been treated as a periodic, checklist-driven activity, often reducing critical User Access Reviews (UAR) to a “check-the-box” compliance task. While essential for meeting mandates like Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) and Information Security Management System (ISMS), this manual approach is increasingly insufficient against today’s evolving internal threats and stringent data privacy regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP). To bridge this gap, SAP-certified solutions such as ToggleNow’s ReviewNow are emerging, offering a deep, native integration that aims to shift access governance from compliance-focused to risk-based.

The technical strength of this approach lies in its ability to harness real-time, granular SAP data. ReviewNow, built as an ABAP-based add-on, achieves approximately 99% automation of UAR tasks. ReviewNow runs natively in the SAP ABAP stack on SAP NetWeaver Application Server, not a bolted-on third-party application. This native integration eliminates the complexities, performance overhead, and maintenance costs associated with middleware or external connectors. By running directly on the SAP NetWeaver Application Server, ReviewNow gains direct access to all necessary tables and logs, allowing it to collect granular data without system disruption.

Moving Beyond Basic UAR: The Strategic Reviews

The core differentiator of advanced GRC tools is their ability to execute specialized, strategic reviews that target specific compliance weak points. ReviewNow offers a suite of functionalities designed for this purpose:

• Automated User Access Reviews: ReviewNow by ToggleNow automates SAP user access reviews with real-time authorization data, risk flags, and system-driven workflows. It routes tasks to reviewers, supports automated remediation, and captures full audit evidence. The platform reduces compliance effort while strengthening controls across SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA environments.
• Sensitive Access Review: In the age of pervasive data protection laws, generic UARs fail to adequately flag access to critical, business-sensitive information. This dedicated review provides a thorough evaluation of sensitive access authorizations, including detailed usage patterns. This level of scrutiny is essential for protecting customer and employee data, directly supporting compliance with GDPR and similar global privacy mandates.
• Risk Review: This capability addresses a major internal vulnerability: unmitigated Segregation of Duties (SoD) risks. Often, an SoD conflict is flagged and a compensatory control is implemented, but the mitigation later expires or is never properly reviewed. ReviewNow performs comprehensive evaluations of SoD and critical risks based on risk data supplied by SAP GRC Access Control or third-party SoD solutions. Because ReviewNow does not independently identify risks, it analyzes the risk items fed into the system, including any reactivated risks following mitigation control expiration.

The challenge of maintaining effective security controls is continuous, not cyclical. The Mitigation Control Review function in ReviewNow ensures that controls assigned to mitigate high-risk access remain pertinent. The solution assesses the current status, assignment, and continued relevance of these controls within the operational framework. This continuous assessment is critical because business processes change, and a control that was effective a year ago may no longer be relevant today.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

The shift toward native automation radically changes SAP security operations. Technology and compliance executives will find their daily roles transitioning from manual project administration to risk strategy oversight. According to ToggleNow, ReviewNow automates approximately 99% of UAR tasks, freeing GRC staff to focus on high-value activities like tailoring SoD rulesets and performing deep-dive risk analysis, rather than chasing approvers and compiling spreadsheets. Because ReviewNow relies on risk definitions from SAP GRC Access Control or third-party SoD tools, these upstream systems remain essential for establishing accurate SoD and critical-risk baselines.

SAP-integrated solutions offer deeper risk insight than generic tools. Many traditional Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions often rely on shallow connector data, resulting in access reviews that lack necessary context. Solutions like ReviewNow, being ABAP-based, provide fine-grained visibility into what users actually did—not just what their roles allow them to do. This data-driven context dramatically improves the accuracy of access decisions and allows for a more effective defense against insider threats.

Executives must prioritize integration complexity and rule-set tailoring. When evaluating vendors, SAPinsiders should scrutinize the solution’s integration model: native SAP add-ons generally offer the least implementation complexity and highest performance. A common challenge in GRC adoption is the “one size fits all” rule set syndrome, where generic SoD rules generate thousands of irrelevant alerts, leading to reviewer fatigue. The key evaluation criterion is the ease with which the tool allows process owners to customize and maintain a bespoke, relevant risk rule set. Since ReviewNow depends on well-maintained SoD rule sets provided by external GRC or SoD systems, organizations should ensure these rule sets are current and aligned to business processes.