Data-Centric Cybersecurity for SAP: Protecting Against External Threats

Migrating to the cloud and keeping pace with technological advancements are exciting, but they also expand your attack surface. Among the most coveted targets for cybercriminals are critical business systems like SAP, which house large amounts of sensitive data vital to organizational operations – the crown jewels of your business.

Valuable Data is the Target

If you think about it, your SAP systems are not the hacker’s actual target. They are just the gateway to the valuable data they seek: proprietary information, vendor and customer transaction data, and financial accounts.

External threat actors are sophisticated and persistent and always researching new threat vectors and vulnerabilities in your SAP systems. They constantly change tactics, techniques, and procedures to avoid detection or overcome remediation actions.

Given the growing number of external threats targeting SAP systems and the sensitive information they store, it is essential to implement robust security measures to safeguard your organization. A data-centric SAP cybersecurity approach combining preventative and detective controls can prevent intrusions and data theft. By integrating these controls, your SAP systems and data can be protected against potential threats.

Why a Multi-Layered Cybersecurity Strategy is Paramount

Addressing evolving external threats demands a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that integrates both preventative and detective controls. Fortunately, Pathlock offers a unique, cutting-edge solution tailored to safeguard your SAP applications and data against external threats.

Detective Controls: Proactive System Hardening and Continuous Monitoring

Pathlock’s Cybersecurity Application Controls (CAC) product empowers organizations with detective controls that continuously monitor SAP systems for vulnerabilities and threat anomalies. The product delivers automated capabilities for Vulnerability Management, Threat Detection and Response, Code Scanning, and Transport Control. These robust controls proactively harden your systems, patch vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them, detect and respond to security threats in real time, secure change management processes, and remediate custom code errors in your ABAP architecture. Implementing these detective controls enables effective and automated security for the perimeter of your SAP environment.

Preventative Controls: Dynamic Risk Prevention and Data Protection

The Dynamic Access Controls module from Pathlock employs an Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) security model to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data by satisfying dynamic and customizable security policies. Organizations can mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and data compromise even if perimeter defenses are breached by leveraging the ABAC model and other preventative controls like Dynamic Data Masking, Data Scrambling, and Data Loss Prevention mechanisms. This approach ensures that even in the event of compromised credentials or sophisticated attacks, critical data in production and non-production SAP environments remains obfuscated and protected.

Pathlock Protects Your Sensitive Data from External Exploits

Pathlock’s Cybersecurity Application Controls product empowers organizations to establish a multi-layered approach to SAP cybersecurity. By leveraging preventative and detective controls, Pathlock enables companies to proactively harden their SAP systems while also eliminating the risk of costly data exfiltration.

Pathlock equips customers with robust capabilities to establish a data-centric SAP cybersecurity strategy through five integrated modules:

• Vulnerability Management
• Code Scanning
• Transport Control
• Threat Detection and Response
• Dynamic Access Controls

These modules help CAC customers secure sensitive data while also hardening the business-critical applications that store it.

To see how Pathlock can help your organization protect against external threats with a data-centric SAP cybersecurity strategy, reach out to set up a demo today.