Breaking the Rules: Why Standard SAP Controls Are Not Enough

Most SAP security strategies have a blind spot and attackers know it. Standard controls protect the expected path. But SAP offers many paths. In a recent webinar, Breaking the Rules: Eight Backdoors to Update Banking Details in SAP, we demonstrated just how many ways there are to change sensitive financial data without triggering a single alert.

The Hidden Risk in “Standard” SAP Security

Most SAP security strategies focus heavily on standard authorization checks and segregation-of-duties controls. These are essential but they are not sufficient. SAP is a highly flexible and complex platform. For almost every business action, there are multiple technical paths to achieve the same result. While organizations typically monitor the intended path (for example, a standard transaction), alternative paths often remain unmonitored.

This creates a dangerous blind spot. If changes can be made outside the expected process and no one is watching then even well-designed controls can be silently bypassed.

The Gap Between IT and Business

One of the core themes of the webinar was the disconnect between IT and business ownership of SAP risk.

• IT teams often assume the business defines what needs to be protected.
• Business teams often assume IT has full visibility into SAP security risks.

The result?

Critical risks fall into the gap between both teams. This lack of clear ownership leads to:

• Overlooked vulnerabilities and misconfiguration
• Misaligned responsibilities
• Increased exposure to fraud and abuse

Nowhere is this more dangerous than in financial master data, such as bank account details.

Why Bank Detail Changes Are a Prime Target

Updating banking information in SAP may seem like a routine administrative task but it is a high-risk action in any ERP system and the same logic applies to other high-risk master data fields.

Similar risks exist for:

• Payment terms and credit limits
• Employee salaries and payroll data
• Supplier and customer master data
• Pricing, discounts, and material valuation

If these changes are made outside approved workflows, organizations face:

• Fraud (e.g., payments redirected to attacker-controlled accounts)
• Business disruption
• Data manipulation and espionage

Circumventing Controls: More Common Than You Think

During the webinar, we showed that SAP allows multiple technical methods to update bank details far beyond the standard, well-known transactions.

These methods may involve:

• Alternative or lesser-known transactions
• Transport mechanisms
• Custom developments
• Interfaces, APIs, or background processes

While many of these mechanisms exist for legitimate operational reasons, they also create opportunities for misuse if not properly governed, monitored, and restricted.
The key takeaway is not how these methods work, but the fact that they exist and are often invisible to traditional controls.

Why Traditional Controls Fall Short

Most organizations rely on:

• Role-based access controls
• Manual approvals
• Periodic reviews

But these controls usually assume: “If the standard transaction is secure, the process is secure.”

That assumption is wrong. Without visibility into all paths that can change sensitive data, organizations are effectively trusting that no one will look for another way.

Key Lessons From the Webinar

The webinar concluded with several important takeaways for SAP security leaders:

• SAP allows multiple ways of performing the same action you must monitor all of them
• Go beyond standard SAP GRC rules and assumptions
• Harden SAP systems to reduce attack paths
• Patch systems consistently
• Automate manual controls wherever possible
• Include custom code and interfaces in your security strategy
• Use automation and tooling to increase both efficiency and coverage

In short: control the outcome, not just the process.

Final Thought: Awareness Is the First Line of Defense

The purpose of this webinar was not to encourage misuse of SAP functionality, but to raise awareness. Organizations that assume “this cannot happen here” are often the ones most at risk. By understanding how controls can be bypassed and by designing defenses that account for SAP’s full complexity organizations can significantly reduce the risk of fraud and operational damage.

Watch the full webinar recording here: Webinar: Break the rules: 8 ways to update Bank details in SAP – YouTube