Securing the Journey to SAP S/4HANA
Earlier this month, Layer Seven Security released the new whitepaper Securing the Journey to SAP S/4HANA: A Security Framework for S/4HANA Migrations. The whitepaper provides a comprehensive guide to S/4HANA security to support the transition from SAP ERP to S/4HANA.
Mainstream maintenance for ERP will end in December 2027. Therefore, organizations must migrate to S/4HANA by the beginning of 2028. To date, only one third of organizations have migrated to S/4HANA. Therefore, the majority of SAP customers will be migrating over the next five years.
Security is one of the largest roadblocks to successful migrations. This is due to significant differences between ERP and S/4HANA that require the restructuring of access and technical controls. It is also due to concerns related to cloud security since almost 70% of organizations are electing to migrate to cloud-based S/4HANA installations. Other security concerns arise from the migration of custom SAP programs from ERP to S/4HANA. These programs often contain hidden and unresolved security vulnerabilities since they were never subject to in depth code vulnerability analysis.
The whitepaper includes detailed recommendations across twelve domains to deal with these and other security concerns and facilitate the smooth transition to S/4HANA. The recommendations are aligned to best practices in the SAP S/4HANA Security Guide. The whitepaper also includes guidance for automating pre and post go-live security checks for S/4HANA migrations using SAP Solution Manager and the Cybersecurity Extension for SAP.