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SAP Identity and authorization

In today’s digital world, where principles like Zero Trust are widely adopted, it is imperative to define and control who can do what with the data and applications in your enterprise landscape. SAP Identity and Authorization is a set of tools and processes that help you manage the access rights of users and applications in your SAP landscape. It also helps you ensure compliance with internal and external policies and regulations.

Definition (What is SAP Identity and Authorization?)

SAP Identity and Authorization consists of two main components: identity management and authorization management.

Identity management is the process of creating, maintaining, and deleting user accounts and their attributes in your SAP systems. But not only that: it also includes assigning users to roles and groups, which determine their access rights. Identity management can be done manually or automatically, using tools such as SAP Identity Management (IDM) or SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance (IAG).

Authorization management is instead the process of defining and enforcing users’ and applications’ access rights in your SAP systems. It also entails creating and maintaining authorization objects, profiles, roles, and rules, which specify what actions users and applications can perform on which data and resources. Authorization management can be done using tools such as SAP Access Control (AC) or SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication Service (IAS).

SAP identity theft
  • SAP Identity and Authorization

SAP Identity Theft

SAP Identity Theft is when someone steals your account details and then uses them to execute unauthorized transactions on your behalf. Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world today. Enterprises should educate their users with some basic rules to help protect their identities.

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Best Practices

Here’s what you can do to improve your SAP Identity and Authorization Management (IAM):

  • Define and document clear roles and responsibilities for the different stakeholders involved in IAM (such as business owners, IT administrators, auditors, and end users). This process will help you establish a clear governance structure and accountability for IAM activities, such as role design, provisioning, review, and audit. It is of crucial importance that you review and update your IAM strategy and policy periodically.
  • Implement a role-based access control (RBAC) model, which means granting access based on the roles and responsibilities of users, rather than on their individual identities. Ideally, you are granting only the minimum access necessary for users to perform their tasks (principle of least privilege). This helps you reduce the number of roles and authorizations required and minimize the risk of excessive or inappropriate access.
  • Automate and streamline your IAM processes, such as provisioning, de-provisioning, approval, certification, and reporting. This will help you reduce manual errors, save time and resources, improve consistency and accuracy, and ensure compliance with internal and external policies and regulations. Leverage tools to streamline this, such as SAP Identity Management (IDM), SAP Access Control (AC), SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance (IAG), or third-party solutions.
  • Monitor and audit your IAM activities regularly. This will help you detect and prevent any unauthorized or suspicious access, identify and remediate any gaps or issues in your IAM processes, measure and improve your IAM performance and maturity, and demonstrate compliance with internal and external policies and regulations. You can use various tools and technologies to monitor and audit your IAM activities, such as SAP Audit Management (AM), SAP Process Control (PC), SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance (IAG), or third-party solutions.

SAP Identity Theft

SAP Identity Theft is when someone steals your account details and then uses them to execute unauthorized transactions on your behalf. Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world today. Enterprises should educate their users with some basic rules to help protect their identities.

Benefits

Managing SAP Identity and Authorization Management (IAM) can be challenging, especially in complex and dynamic environments. By following the best practices outlined above, you can improve your SAP Identity and Authorization Management (IAM) and achieve the following benefits: 

  • Enhanced security: You can protect your SAP system from unauthorized or malicious access, data breaches, or cyberattacks. 
  • Increased efficiency: You can simplify and speed up your access management process, reduce operational costs and complexity, and improve user productivity and satisfaction. 
  • Improved compliance: You can comply with internal and external policies and regulations, such as GDPR, SOX, or ISO 27001. 
  • Higher maturity: You can advance your IAM capabilities from reactive to proactive, from tactical to strategic, and from siloed to integrated. 
identity SAP

Questions (FAQ)

How can I improve the SAP Identity and Authorization operations process?

It is necessary to implement tools and best practices that simplify and automate the tasks involved. Some examples that you can follow: 

  • Use the SAP Identity Management (SAP IDM) solution to centrally manage user identities and access rights across multiple SAP systems,  
  • Utilize the SAP Access Control (SAP AC) solution to monitor and analyze risks and compliance issues related to user access, 
  • Finally, follow the SAP recommendations for designing and maintaining roles, profiles, and authorizations.  

How can I optimize the role design and assignment for SAP systems?

There are a few steps that you can follow:  

  • Define clear and consistent business requirements for user access rights and align them with the organizational structure and processes. 
  • Utilize a role-based access control (RBAC) model for designing and assigning roles. Ensure that the user roles have the minimum necessary access rights to perform their tasks. 
  • Implement a regular review and approval process for the role design and assignment to verify that the roles are updated and compliant with the various security policies and regulations. 

What are the benefits of using a centralized identity provider for SAP systems?

 A centralized identity provider (IdP) is a service that authenticates users and issues security tokens. Those can be used to access multiple SAP systems to: 

  • Simplify user management and reduce administrative overhead.  
  • Enhance security and compliance by enforcing consistent security policies and standards across all SAP systems,  
  • Improve user experience and productivity through a seamless single sign-on (SSO) experience across all SAP systems. 

How to protect your company's SAP Identities?

Embed identity protection into your business systems for tighter IT security. Reduce risk and involve your SAP users to detect and respond to identity theft.

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