Ralf Kempf, CTO SAST SOLUTIONS, and his team have already guided many enterprises through their migration to SAP S/4HANA. He talked about his recipes for success in an interview with Ulrich Parthier, publisher of it management magazine.
Excerpts from the interview are provided below.
There are many methods for assessing the risk potential of SAP landscapes and identifying potential vulnerabilities, so it isn’t always easy to keep track of all the alternatives. Options range from vulnerability scans to audits and penetration tests. But which approach is the right one for identifying vulnerabilities depends entirely on your individual requirements.
In most cases, enterprise networks are infected as a result of human error. Employees click on spoofed links, accidentally reveal their passwords to third parties, or open a file that contains unexpected malware. In attack vectors involving the SAP GUI, employees are often not to blame, because an incorrectly configured SAP system is enough to enable damage to the IT landscape.
It is well known that SAP systems present an attractive target for hackers and manipulators. After all, SAP systems gather all the sensitive company data in one place, making it all the more important to protect them against unauthorized access. In addition to conventional measures for improving SAP security and compliance, this includes extensive anti-virus protection adapted specifically to the requirements of SAP systems.
The Security Audit Log allows users with extensive authorizations to be monitored. This is particularly useful for ensuring compliance with both internal security policies and external legal requirements. The SAP standard tool gives an overview of critical activities relevant to security and logs them.
To secure and encrypt customer networks, SAP offers the SNC (Secure Network Communications) interface with which users can log in to SAP systems without having to enter a user name or password. In the standard system, SAP login credentials are transmitted in clear text. The SNC interface routes calls through the SAP Cryptographic Library, to encrypt all communications between the SAP GUI and the SAP server. This enables secure individual logins for SAP.
SAP systems require special attention when it comes to their security and this is no longer news to anyone. More often than not, the ERP systems supplied from Walldorf in Baden-Württemberg store some of the most crucial and sensitive company data. That said, what is the best approach to achieving the optimum level of security? A security audit would fit the bill!
Do you have an overview of the RFC interfaces in your SAP systems? The larger the company, the more interfaces there are. Unfortunately, these are often not taken into account when securing IT systems, thereby allowing hackers free access to sensitive data. The name of the game for SAP managers is therefore: Clean up and check.
SAP has developed a new product, SAP UI Data Security, to support data protection requirements in the SAP environment. UI Data Security comprises two components: UI Masking and UI Logging.
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To achieve the most comprehensive protection possible against potential attacks in SAP environments (and deal with those that do occur), encryption mechanisms and up-to-date cryptography libraries are required using TLS.
