Top 10 SAP Audit and Security Risks
Key Takeaways
⇨ Infrastructure and Configuration Vulnerabilities: Misconfigurations in SAP infrastructure, including communication protocols and system trust settings, pose significant security risks. Proper configuration management and strict access controls are essential to prevent vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
⇨ Patch Management and Custom Code Security: Effective patch management is critical to address vulnerabilities and maintain system stability. Similarly, securing custom code through rigorous testing and adherence to SAP-specific security guidelines helps mitigate risks associated with customizations.
⇨ Access Control and Monitoring: Implementing robust access controls, role-based permissions, and segregation of duties (SoD) is crucial to prevent unauthorized access and potential fraud. Continuous monitoring of security events, privileged user accounts, and system configurations enhances the ability to detect and respond to security incidents promptly.
SAP is a secure platform—but countless options for customization, access levels and permissions, alongside
increasing cybersecurity threats—mean vulnerabilities can appear if the organization fails to implement a thorough process for managing them. Thus, companies must be aware of potential risks to ensure the system is secure and functioning efficiently. The focus of most businesses using SAP has securing the system in accordance with regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and other regulatory compliance requirements, like the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). However, new external threats to SAP have begun to emerge: Over the last few years, criminals have sought to exploit ERP systems in order to access
confidential information, from trade secrets to employee information. The following list discusses 10 common risks that can create vulnerabilities in a SAP system and compromise important data.
1. Infrastructure security vulnerabilities
Infrastructure issues have typically been overlooked in the past, as they were not a key concern. However, as cybercrimes broaden in scope and severity, infrastructure vulnerabilities
must take greater precedence. Many issues that most people are unaware of or disregard can have a huge impact, as the greatest application-level security in the world can be largely undermined by vulnerabilities lower in the stack. For example, a layer of SAP configures how different hosts within the SAP infrastructure talk to each other; a normal configuration will have production, quality assurance and test servers. The SAP system trusts those servers, so misconfiguration or lax access controls around system administrator commands could introduce vulnerabilities. Remote function calls (RFCs) enable middle-layer communication within SAP; if someone can exploit those RFCs, they can gain control of an entire system.
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