SAP Vulnerability Management

Why do you need SAP Vulnerability Management?

With every new security breach, the number of managers concerned about cyber security rises. Today everybody has to ask themselves: “Do my security controls keep pace with attacks?” In fact, being secured is quite similar to being healthy. There are no guarantees you will not get sick, but you definitely won’t pass away unexpectedly if you identify the issue timely.

Regular checkups and stress tests are as important for SAP systems as they are for people.

Challenge

The major challenges to SAP Vulnerability Management implementation are:

• lack of communication;
• large number of assets;
• constant stream of vulnerabilities;
• lack of accountability;
• insufficient security awareness.

You know the way it works. The security analyst runs a vulnerability scan and throws pages of report over the office panel to the system administrators, SAP BASIS team, Access Control team, or ABAP developers. Some patches are missing, some do not fix the issues, or there isn’t enough time to get to them. Vulnerabilities may stay unpatched forever

The CISO is left wondering about the meaning of those vulnerabilities to business risks, completeness of the scanning coverage, and the ability of the team to ensure protection. The CIO is puzzled by the peculiarities of the patches for the SAP platform. The CXOs are still uncertain whether it was worth the efforts at all.

Solution

The solution to this problem is quite simple. If there is a lot of parties involved, the activities are laborious and resource-demanding. You are responsible for the result, but you cannot direct all the actors – you need a business process. It will let you orchestrate the work of the actors towards the intended result: to assure the stakeholders that the SAP systems meet the target security level.

Implementing SAP Vulnerability Management in partnership with ERPScan’s Professional Services Team will let you get the most out of the ERPScan Smart Cybersecurity Platform for SAP, establish a continuous improvement cycle for the ERP security, and give a clear picture of SAP security to the board.

What is SAP Vulnerability Management?

In a nutshell, Vulnerability Management is a process of proactive security risk management achieved through the combination of business context, vulnerability assessment results, and a uniting cross-boundary process.

SAP Vulnerability Management consists of the following phases and activities:

How do we implement SAP Vulnerability Management?

Enterprises differ in their ability to adapt, in the maturity of the IT processes, and budget. However, we believe that once you have internalized the idea of the end-to-end process of SAP Vulnerability Management, you can master the control over SAP security risks originating from vulnerabilities.

The typical implementation process of SAP Vulnerability Management includes the following activities:

Outcome

As an outcome, you will have a documented and implemented process of SAP Vulnerability Management. It can be performed either on your own or partially outsourced.

The process will be described in the SAP Vulnerability Management process description, which includes definition of the process roles and their responsibilities, description of business activities and tasks, KPIs and SLAs.

During the execution, the process will deliver the following results:

• Scan Profiles: a list of security checks related to applicable information security standards and regulations.
• Scan Plan: List of assets and time periods at which vulnerability scans should be performed.
• Remediation Plan: Description of the SAP landscape, a threat map, recommended remediation measures, and action plans for every SAP system.
• Executive Report: a report on performance. SAP Vulnerability Management: security, compliance and remediation metrics

This adaptive approach will help build your Security Team’s capabilities, which are crucial to maintaining reliability and trustworthiness of the SAP system

You will finally assure all stakeholders that SAP systems meet the target security level: vulnerability risk is under control; technical compliance is ensured; the Security Team stays current on security threats.

This will give you a competitive advantage and put you ahead of most enterprises worldwide.