Layer Seven Security Blog
Stay up to date on the latest trends in SAP security, new threats and information on protecting your critical systems against an attack
US-CERT Issues Alert for SAP Invoker Servlet Vulnerability
US-CERT published an alert yesterday to warn SAP customers of the dangers posed by the invoker servlet vulnerability in AS Java systems. According to the alert, there is evidence to suggest that SAP systems at 36 organizations have been exploited by the vulnerability. The organizations are based in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, …
How to Visualize Cyber Security Risks in Your Systems with SAP Lumira
SAP Lumira can be used to access, visualize and explore data of any size from virtually any source. It enables users to build and share powerful interactive data visualizations using a simple user-friendly interface. Since Lumira can acquire data and enable users to create customized reports through self-service, it removes the need for programming, scripting …
How to Block RFC Callback Attacks in Your SAP Systems
Callback attacks exploit weaknesses in RFC security to execute function modules in calling systems. The impact of such attacks can be severe, ranging from the creation of dialog users with system-wide privileges to modifying or extracting sensitive data. This can occur if client systems execute malicious code within the function modules of connected systems. In …
Survey Reveals 65 percent of SAP Platforms Were Breached Between 2014-15
Earlier this week, the Ponemon Institute released the results of the most comprehensive study performed to date on the state of SAP cybersecurity. The Institute is widely known for the annual Cost of Data Breach report that trends average data breach costs across major countries. However, it also performs a variety of other studies related …
Cybersecurity Targets in China’s New Five Year Plan
The details of China’s latest five year plan covering the period between 2016-2020 are expected to be released next month but early indications suggest it will focus upon reducing China’s reliance on foreign technology. Intelligence agencies and security researchers contend there is a strong correlation between industries targeted for growth by China and industries that suffer data …
Managing Security with SAP Solution Manager
SAP Solution Manager is the second most widely deployed SAP product after ECC. In other words, there are more installations of SolMan in the world than there are for products such as BI, PI, CRM and SRM. This isn’t surprising when you take into account that SolMan is for IT what ECC is for business: …
What’s New in the SAP Cybersecurity Framework 3.0
Released earlier this month, the third version of the SAP Cybersecurity Framework includes important changes in the areas of transport layer security, logging and monitoring, and vulnerability management. It also discusses the most significant hack against SAP systems to date: the devastating data breach suffered by U.S Investigation Services (USIS). USIS performed background checks on …
Season’s Greetings
As we near the end of the year, we would like to express our gratitude to the customers, partners and supporters that have contributed to another record year at Layer Seven Security. We look forward to relentlessly serving your cybersecurity needs in 2016 by securing your SAP assets and enabling you to maximize the value of …
Get Ready for SAP Solution Manager 7.2: What to Expect
It’s well known that licenses for SAP Solution Manager are included in SAP maintenance and support agreements. However, with the release of version 7.2 next year, SAP will take this a step further by providing free licenses for SAP HANA for use with SolMan 7.2. Customer’s will still have to pay for hardware costs but …
Are your System Users Vulnerable to SAP Hacks?
One of the most telling statistics revealed at BlackHat USA earlier this year was the fact that 84 percent of InfoSec professionals regard unmanaged privileged credentials as the biggest cyber security vulnerability within their organizations. For SAP environments, the dangers posed by abusing user accounts with privileged access are well-known and can include shutting down SAP …
Monitoring SAP Security Metrics with SolMan Dashboards
SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) includes a complete dashboard framework for visualizing data metrics and KPIs across a wide variety of areas. This includes areas such as availability, performance, service delivery, and crucially, system security. What’s more, the process for enabling and customizing dashboards is relatively quick and simple. This short guide walks through the steps to …
How to Discover Missing Security Notes for Your SAP Systems using ConVal
Earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange released a definitive guide to cybersecurity targeted at directors and officers of public companies. Developed with Palo Alto Networks, the guide includes contributions from over thirty-five industry experts and contends with a wide range of questions including legal and regulatory issues, cyber insurance, supplier risks, and incident …
Featured in SAPinsider: Unlocking the Cyber Security Toolkit in SAP Solution Manager
How to Implement Advanced Security Monitoring Without Third-Party Software The fear and anxiety driven by the wave of cyber attacks in recent years has led many companies to bolster their security programs. It’s also led to a stream of software solutions from third-party developers offering to solve customers’ cyber security challenges. You may have heard the sales spin, watched the …
How to Protect Sensitive Data in Your SAP Systems with Read Access Logging
The need to monitor access to classified data in SAP systems has never been greater. End users are increasingly working with SAP data from outside the borders of corporate networks. Corporate information is also increasingly under threat from cyber criminals, hacktivists, cyber spies and terrorists that seek to exploit classified information for financial gain or …
Can You Trust SAP with Your System Security?
Can you trust SAP with your system security? The question is worth pondering, not least since it is one of the key arguments used by third party software vendors to support the use of their security tools over SAP-delivered solutions. Although the argument is usually made in the context of vulnerability management for cybersecurity, the …
Counting the Costs of Cyber Espionage
According to a recent study performed by the Center of Strategic and International Studies, the annual cost of cybercrime is more than $400 billion. This is equal to almost 1 percent of global income and higher than the national income of most countries. The report states that “The most important loss from cybercrime is in the …
OPM Data Breach Reveals the Limitations of Cybersecurity Solutions
The fallout from the record-breaking breach disclosed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) earlier this month reached a low point at a Capitol Hill hearing on June 16. During the hearing, members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform scolded OPM officials and IT executives for their “complete and utter failure” to protect …
Are 95 percent of SAP systems really vulnerable to cyber attack?
Earlier this month, SAP issued a strongly-worded response to claims made by the software vendor Onapsis in a press release that over 95 percent of SAP systems assessed by Onapsis were exposed to vulnerabilities that could lead to the compromise of SAP systems. According to SAP, “The press release published by Onapsis is aimed at …
Turn the Tide against Cyber Attacks with SAP Enterprise Threat Detection
One of the most striking facts revealed by the 2014 Verizon DBIR is that only one in every six data breaches are detected by organizations that are the victim of such breaches. The statistic revealed that the vast majority of organizations lack the capability to detect incidents that lead to a data breach. According to …
Discover Security Patches for your SAP Systems using System Recommendations
One of the most startling facts revealed by the 2015 Cyber Risk Report is that over 44 percent of data breaches stem from the exploitation of known vulnerabilities that are over two years old. This suggests that effective patching can dramatically lower the likelihood of a successful data breach and, when employed with other countermeasures …
Five Logs that Could Reveal a Data Breach in your SAP Systems
One of the most important discoveries uncovered by security researchers investigating the recent data breach at Anthem is that the original compromise may have occurred as early as April 2014, nine months before the breach was discovered by the organisation. The attack has led to the loss of personal information impacting over 80 million individuals. …
SAP Cybersecurity Framework 2.0: What’s New?
Since the official release of the SAP Cybersecurity Framework in 2014, the standard has become the de facto benchmark for securing SAP systems from advanced cyber threats. Drawing upon guidance issued directly by SAP, as well as the real-world experience of front-line SAP security architects and forensic investigators, the framework delivers a single point of …
Three Steps to Prevent a Sony-Scale Breach of Your SAP Systems
The recent attack experienced by Sony Pictures Entertainment may well prove to be the most significant breach of the year. By all measures, the impact has been devastating for the organization, leading to the loss of almost 40GB of data to attackers. This includes not only proprietary intellectual property such as digital media, blueprints and …
New SAP Guidance Recommends Configuration Validation for Security Monitoring
Some of the most critical recommendations issued by SAP in the recently released paper Securing Remote Function Calls include the use of configuration validation in Solution Manager to monitor RFC destination settings. This includes checks for destinations with stored credentials, trusted connections, and authorizations granted to RFC users in target systems. It also includes the …