Top 5 CISO Best Practices to Achieve Cybersecurity Excellence for SAP

The importance of SAP applications for enterprises worldwide makes them highly attractive targets for cyber criminals. SAP is the backbone that drives mission-critical processes. It powers finance, logistics, human resources, and the very data flows that keep organizations running every day. However, due to their complexity and integration with multiple other business applications and cloud services, SAP systems are challenging to secure with traditional IT security practices alone. 

For CISOs, this creates a challenge. Many of the controls that work well on generic IT infrastructure do not translate neatly into SAP landscapes. Achieving cybersecurity excellence requires practices tailored to SAP’s specific risks while still aligning with the broader enterprise strategy. Five best practices in particular stand out for every CISO who wants to both protect the organization and meet the rising demands of regulators and boards. 

1. Shifting from Security Auditing to SAP-native Threat Detection  

In many organizations, SAP security monitoring begins and ends with the Security Audit Log (SAL). On its own, this approach cannot keep pace with today’s threat landscape. Too often, it results in vast volumes of audit entries being pushed into a SIEM, which quickly overwhelms security analysts with irrelevant events. Instead of delivering visibility, it generates noise and leaves analysts unable to distinguish abnormal behavior from routine activity. SAP events, such as bypassed authority checks, critical data extractions, or elevated activities from newly created accounts, should immediately trigger alerts for the SOC team. However, a major blind spot occurs when SOC teams lack the specialized SAP expertise to craft effective detection use cases, an omission that leaves organizations dangerously exposed. 

Meeting compliance requirements by turning on auditing is no longer enough. What is needed is genuine Threat Detection that understands the unique characteristics of SAP. Security teams should be equipped with context-rich information and decision-enabling messages that allow them to recognize malicious activities before they escalate. SAP-native Threat Detection solutions, combined with SAP Security knowledge available to analysts in the SOC, can transform the monitoring approach into an effective cyber defense. 

By making this shift, CISOs cut through the log noise, free their teams from chasing false alarms, and focus on the incidents that truly matter. This step aligns with the lessons learned from NIS2 compliance efforts, where simply collecting data without proper detection creates dangerous blind spots. However, reducing the vulnerabilities in the SAP environment is equally important for effective anomaly detection. 

2. Accelerating Vulnerability Management and System Hardening

Effective Vulnerability Management in SAP goes beyond simply installing the monthly SAP Security Notes. It requires a structured process that evaluates system configurations, timely applies security patches across SAP and third-party components, and addresses vulnerabilities introduced by custom code. Since custom ABAP developments are common in most landscapes, they frequently become hidden sources of risk. 

System hardening plays an equally crucial role. By removing unnecessary services, tightening configurations, and enforcing strict security baselines, the attack surface is significantly reduced.  Hardening measures also offer a second benefit: they decrease background noise in logs and thereby support more precise Threat Detection. With fewer false alerts caused by insecure settings or missing patches, security teams can better identify genuine anomalies. 

As recent zero-day incidents have demonstrated, organizations cannot always rely on immediate patch availability. A well-hardened and patched SAP environment is the best preparation for zero-day events, as it provides breathing room and makes exploitation far less likely. When combined with an ongoing Vulnerability Management roadmap, hardening ensures resilience against both known and emerging threats.  

While SAP system hardening is widely recognized and many organizations already follow the SAP Security Baseline, few go further by limiting uncontrolled privileged activities — such as those of SAP administrators — to reduce background noise from normal activities in the Security Audit Log. 

3. Managing Privileged Access in SAP

Privileged accounts are among the most serious risks in any SAP environment. Users with elevated permissions, often intended for administrators or developers, can make system-wide changes or access sensitive data. If such an account is compromised, attackers effectively gain the keys to the kingdom. 

The traditional approach of simply assigning permanent superuser rights is no longer viable. Instead, organizations should aim to reduce the number of privileged accounts to the bare minimum and grant elevated rights only for as long as they are needed. Temporary session-based access, combined with approvals and monitoring, not only lowers the attack surface but also creates accountability. Due to the high cost and complexity of traditional solutions for managing privileged access, many organizations are hesitant to implement them. Instead, they continue relying on manual processes to manage privileged IDs, often depending on consultants to capture snapshots of activities performed during privileged access. These snapshots are then used as evidence for audit reviews. 

Purpose-built Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions for SAP bring additional safeguards. They can record session activity, provide fine-grained control, and help auditors verify that elevated access is used responsibly. For the CISO, implementing SAP-specific PAM ensures that privileged identity risks are controlled without disrupting legitimate administrative work. When combined with enforced Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for privileged users, organizations establish a holistic defense strategy that strengthens resilience against cyberattacks.