SAP GRC Auditing: Why It’s Crucial for Your Organization

Most people hear the word “audit” and begin to tense up. That’s probably because it is typically used in the context of an IRS audit, and nobody wants that. However, an audit is simply an objective examination and evaluation, usually of financial records, and in this context, including systems, applications, and products as well. When you use an SAP landscape, you have the finest business architecture around. It only makes sense to make sure that it is performing at optimal levels. With good SAP Auditing, you will have no worries about governance, risk, or compliance (GRC).

SAP Governance Auditing

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) are integrated programs that maintain all of a company’s transactions in a single database. They are key components of your SAP landscape whether you have SAP HANA or any other type. With your SAP landscape reflecting your particular business model, the roles and responsibilities of every agent in the organization is clear. SAP Audits can assess risks to the critical business data that is accessed by multiple users across the company. Inaccurate, invalid, or fraudulent data entered at one point can affect the accuracy of data across the system. Ideally, integration with SAP Risk Management and SAP Process Control will make the SAP Auditing process seamless. You will be able to gain precise insights and real-time analysis of potential problems.

Risk Auditing

Security audits are procedures that let an auditor trace a single transaction as it interacts across a range of connected applications. SAP internal security audit systems can automatically detect transactions that violate security protection protocols. SAP managers and internal auditors use security audits to search for fraudulent transactions, discover control system failures, and access violations. Other security concerns that auditors search for are unauthorized customer profile changes and unauthorized changes to master data files. SAP Auditing streamlines these processes with automated checks and mobile capabilities. That means the ability to assess risks at high speeds and clarify problematic situations keeps your business running smoothly.

Compliance Auditing

Companies have a duty to adhere to all state and federal regulations for their particular industry as well as to protect clients’ private information. SAP Auditing keeps them current with regulations and evaluates whether a business is complying with state and federal rules governing the privacy of information in the company’s control. Businesses that operate internationally are required to comply with any applicable international business and privacy regulations as well. With SAP Auditing, companies can be confident that their SAP systems protect the privacy of consumer information, employee information, and proprietary business information. SAP Auditing means that you have the internal controls demanded by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) too.

SAP Auditing keeps your company running smoothly and safely. It chooses high-value issues for further investigation. It empowers your internal auditors to conduct timely risk assessments, and it automates and accelerates the auditing process. With SAP Auditing, you have a simpler approach to creating, tracking, and managing audit issues. It also speeds up the resolution of those issues. Unlike an IRS audit, SAP Auditing allows you to relax, knowing that your SAP landscape is being monitored and objectively assessed.

SAP Security: Best Practices, Risk, and More

SAP Security is like an extraordinarily complex, multi-person juggling act. You may have seen performances where a couple people juggle several balls, throwing them between each other, while always keeping them in the air. Imagine if that were expanded to include every person in your business and all those balls represented every one of your customers, every item in your inventory, and, all of your financial information. With SAP Security in place, every person in your organization has access to the data needed to do their jobs, while restricting access to other areas. That means that there is limited possibility of accidentally damaging or deliberately misusing vital information. This post explores SAP Security, how it mitigates risk, best practices, and more.

Mitigating Risk

SAP Security works by analyzing the different kinds of information your company uses and the people who have access to them, and then building appropriate protections around them. In order to mitigate your risks, you need to establish a baseline. Review who has access to the company’s most sensitive information; what titles do they hold? Then examine your company’s standard operating procedure to determine where protections are most needed. This is where you create a Segregation of Duties (SoD) analysis. It’s also key to think about scenarios outside the norm and plan for those as well. It’s best to include SAP Security in the planning stage; it’s possible to do it after your SAP system is up and running, but security should be integrated from the start. Finally, SAP Security maintains its integrity by performing regular system-wide assessments which should also be included and planned for.

Best Practices – General

There are some basic best practices that should be employed with every SAP Security system, and some that apply to the different kinds of SAP systems and modules. With every SAP system, Admins create a standard role for a position (or title) and that can be assigned to anyone who fills it. For instance, your company may have account managers who deal with specific clients. There would be “keys” available for all account managers, and then more specific “keys” for each manager’s clients. That way, every account manager can access all the information necessary for their clients, but not for another account manager’s clients.

Best Practices – SAP HANA

SAP HANA security requires some adaptations from the standard SAP security system. Best practice here means that SAP HANA Security operates on a least access rights paradigm that diminishes the potential damage an employee could cause with access to more information. SAP HANA permissions work with different implementations than general SAP permissions, and it also handles objects differently, so it’s important to have someone with expertise in SAP HANA Security. If that is not part of your corporate structure, contracting with the professionals at 1st Basis is a wise choice.

Best Practices – SAP Fiori

Again, implementation of SAP Fiori varies from other SAP systems, and the most important best practice action you can take is to ensure that you are working with someone with a comprehensive understanding of SAP Fiori. There are 9 main security best practices that should be followed when using SAP Fiori. Most businesses are taken up with the actual work of the company, not the SAP system or its security. Employing the experts at 1st Basis is best practice.

When working correctly, SAP Security should be invisible, allowing each member of the company to access the needed information at the appropriate time so that productivity remains high. It’s a juggling act where the balls are always in the air or in the right person’s hands, never breaking the rhythm of the movement, never concealed in a juggler’s pocket, and never on the floor.