Pierluigi Paganini
May 09, 2015
Onapsis study found that over 95% of SAP systems are exposed to vulnerabilities that could lead to full compromise of the company’s business.
SAP is one of the most popular enterprise software used by companies to manage business operations and customer relations.
A recent study conducted by the SAP solutions provider revealed that more than 95 percent of enterprise SAP installations is affected by serious security issues that open them to cyber attacks that could result in a dangerous data breach. The assessment confirmed that more than 250,000 SAP business customers worldwide, including 98 percent of the 100 most valued brands, are potentially exposed to cyber attacks that could exploit a series of vulnerabilities. On average the companies result vulnerable for a period of 18 months from the disclosure of the vulnerability.
“The big surprise is that SAP cyber security is falling through the cracks at most companies due to a responsibility gap between the SAP operations team and the IT security team,” Onapsis chief executive Mariano Nunez says. “The truth is that most patches applied are not security-related, are late or introduce further operational risk.“
The study also reported that SAP released 391 security patches in 2014 and more that 50 percent of them was ranked as high priority.
The principal cyber attacks against SAP applications was grouped in the following categories:
The report provided details about the Top Three Common Cyber Attack Vectors on SAP Systems which allow hackers to compromise SAP systems and access company data applications. The cyber attacks could have serious repercussions on the following key business processes that were identified by the experts:
According to Nunez, SAP HANA is responsible for a 450 percent increase in the number of new security patches.
“This trend is not only continuing, but exacerbating with SAP HANA, which has brought a 450 percent increase in new security patches,” explained Nunez. “With SAP HANA positioned in the center of the SAP ecosystem, data stored in SAP platforms now must be protected both in the cloud and on-premise.“
The report also provides the following action plan to improve the security level of the SAP systems.
In order to protect the SAP software is important to maintain up-to-date the systems by following any SAP Security Notes and monitoring internal architecture for security issues.
(Security Affairs – SAP systems, cyber security)
