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Stress-Free System Updates: 7 Security Best Practices for SAP Transport Management

What is SAP Transport Management?

SAP Transport Management (SAP TMS) is more than just a tool—it’s your lifeline for managing the flow of objects and changes across SAP systems. By orchestrating this movement, SAP Transport Management ensures system consistency and prevents potential conflicts that could arise from uncoordinated modifications.

At its core, SAP TMS serves as the vehicle for organizations to effectively manage changes to their SAP landscapes. This critical function allows users to implement updates smoothly, minimizing disruptions to their business processes. The process begins in the development system, where changes are first introduced. From there, SAP TMS facilitates the organized migration of these changes through testing environments and, ultimately, into production systems.

This structured approach yields several key benefits. First and foremost, it acts as a safeguard against errors and data inconsistencies that could otherwise plague systems updated in a haphazard manner. Moreover, SAP TMS doesn’t just focus on functionality—it also increases cybersecurity. With its robust measures to protect against unauthorized access and potential data breaches, it becomes an integral component of an organization’s overall cybersecurity strategy.

SAP Transport Management is not beneficial when moving data—it helps to ensure the integrity, security, and continuous improvement of your SAP solutions. As businesses increasingly rely on their SAP systems for critical business processes, the role of SAP TMS in maintaining a stable and secure environment cannot be overstated.

How does SAP Transport Management Work?

SAP Transport Management manages the movement of software and configuration changes. These changes need to cascade across different SAP systems, including development, testing, and production systems. Here’s an overview of how it works:

Create A Transport Request
Approve and Release The Transport Request
Transport The Request
Test The Changes
Close The Transport Request
Create A Transport Request

A transport request is created to package the changes made in a development system. This request includes all the required details. It includes the objects that were altered, the SAP version, and the target system to which the changes will be applied.

Approve and Release The Transport Request

The transport request is reviewed and approved by relevant stakeholders, such as developers, QA personnel, and project managers. Once approved, the request is released to be transported to the target system.

Transport The Request

The transport request is transported to the target system, where the changes are applied. The target system could be a testing or production system.

Test The Changes

After the changes are applied, they are tested to ensure they work as intended and don’t impact other areas of the system.

Close The Transport Request

Once the changes have been tested and verified, the transport request is closed.

Why Should You Use SAP Transports?

Part of DevSecOps is to bring security to each step of the development lifecycle–more and more organizations are adopting tools like SAP Transport Management. Transports can be used at multiple points in the development cycle as shown in the diagram. Because transports are used at multiple points in the development cycle, it can be an overlooked aspect of SAP security, creating opportunities for exploitation across your SAP applications. Even with appropriate access management in place, an attacker can leverage a number of techniques to compromise production systems. This often results in loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

What Security Teams Should Know about SAP Transport Management

Managing enterprise systems is an unending quest to balance optimization and automation with risk management and data security. There are several known security risks associated with SAP Transport Management, including:

Unauthorized User Access

If proper access controls and identity management are not in place, unauthorized individuals could gain access to the SAP Transport Management system and make changes to the transport requests without the necessary permissions. This could result in data breaches, ERP downtime, cyberattacks, and other negative consequences. Baked-in data protection continues to be a top priority for organizations that find themselves increasingly on the receiving end of cyberattacks.

Data Security

Transport requests may contain sensitive data, such as user credentials, financial information, or personally identifiable information (PII). If these transport requests are not properly secured, they could be intercepted and used to steal data.

Insecure Transport Protocols

SAP Transport Management uses different protocols to transport requests between systems, such as HTTP or FTP. If these protocols are not properly secured, attackers could intercept the transport requests and modify or delete them.

Lack of Monitoring and Auditing

Without proper monitoring and auditing, it’s difficult to identify unauthorized access or changes made to transport requests. This could result in security breaches going unnoticed for long periods of time.

Segregation of Duties

Without proper segregation of duties, it’s possible for individuals to have access to all areas of the SAP Transport Management system. This could make it easier for them to make unauthorized changes or steal data.

To mitigate these risks, it’s important to implement proper access controls, use secure transport protocols, monitor and audit transport activities, and ensure proper segregation of duties. Additionally, implementing encryption and digital signatures can help ensure the integrity and confidentiality of transport requests.

7 Security Best Practices for SAP Transport Management

Drawing on our experience with many enterprise SAP users, here are a few best practices for securing SAP Transport Management include but are not limited to:

Implement Access Controls

Prevent unauthorized access to the SAP Transport Management system. This can be done by implementing strong authentication and authorization mechanisms, such as two-factor authentication and role-based access control.

Use Secure Transport Protocols

Implement secure transport protocols, such as HTTPS and SFTP, to ensure that transport requests are encrypted during transit and not susceptible to interception and tampering.

Monitor & Audit Transport Activities

Implement monitoring and auditing mechanisms to track all transport activities and detect any unauthorized access or changes. Regularly review audit logs to ensure compliance with security policies.

Secure Transport Routes

Ensure that transport routes are secured by implementing firewalls, VPNs, and other security measures. This can help prevent unauthorized access and ensure the integrity and confidentiality of transport requests.

Apply Security Patches & Updates

Keep the SAP Transport Management system up to date with the latest security patches and updates to mitigate known vulnerabilities.

Perform Regular Security Assessments

Perform regular security assessments, such as penetration testing and vulnerability scanning, to identify and address any security gaps in the system.

Educate SAP Users about Security Operations

Provide regular training and education for users to raise awareness about the importance of security monitoring, and how to identify and prevent security threats, especially in pursuit of data privacy (no one wants to run afoul of GDPR regulators) across your SAP environment.

By implementing these best practices, organizations can ensure the security and integrity of their SAP Transport Management systems and protect against cyberattacks without detracting from user experience.

How to Implement the 7 Security Best Practices in SAP Transport Management?

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to implement the best practices for securing SAP Transport Management and other enterprise business applications:

Adopt Access Controls
Use Secure Transport Protocols
Monitor and Audit Transport Activities
Secure Transport Routes
Apply Security Patches and Updates
Perform Regular Security Assessments
Educate Users with the Latest Security Information
Adopt Access Controls
  • Define roles and responsibilities for users and assign user access based on these roles.
  • Implement two-factor authentication or single-sign-on for critical functions.
  • Protect against unauthorized access by enforcing password policies to ensure that passwords are strong and changed regularly.
Use Secure Transport Protocols
  • Implement HTTPS for web-based access to the SAP Transport Management system.
  • Implement SFTP for secure file transfer of transport requests.
Monitor and Audit Transport Activities
  • Implement secure configuration for audit logging all SAP transport activities through any SAP system interfaces.
  • Review audit logs regularly to detect any unauthorized access or changes.
Secure Transport Routes
  • Implement firewalls and VPNs to secure transport routes between systems.
  • Security solutions like encryption and digital signatures can help ensure the integrity and confidentiality of transport requests.
Apply Security Patches and Updates
  • Regularly update the SAP Transport Management system with the latest security patches and updates.
  • Coordinate with end users to ensure patch management can be prioritized without disrupting regular business operations – these are not something that can be back-burnered for an ideal quiet period.
Perform Regular Security Assessments
  • Perform regular penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to identify and address any security gaps in the system.
  • Review security policies and procedures regularly to ensure they are up to date.
  • These assessments can also flag opportunities to refine data retention policies and remediation strategies should a threat actor succeed in gaining access to your SAP environment.
Educate Users with the Latest Security Information
  • Provide regular security training and education to users to raise awareness about the importance of secure software and how to identify and prevent security threats.
  • Promote a culture of security awareness by making security a priority in the organization for all users of SAP systems and other business applications.
  • Education is particularly important for business making the switch from on-premises SAP systems to SAP Cloud solutions like SAP S/4Hana.
  • Look to your software providers for additional resources on secure configuration to make user compliance as easy as possible.

Onapsis for SAP Transport Management

Organizations need to implement the right security solutions to protect their SAP backend development system holistically against cyberattacks. If not properly protected, the SAP Transport Management system represents a significant data security and continuity risk as we have addressed above.

Onapsis Control automates the monitoring of changes that are leaving the development system and provides additional approval workflows for critical situations. Control is ideal for enterprises who want to:

  • Scan transports, and their construction, for errors prior to being released into production
  • Customize transport scans to identify errors in transport construction, and the code within the transport, for errors prior to release into production
  • Take advantage of continuous monitoring of transports with automated alerts of suspicious content
  • Leverage compatibility with SAP Languages, Databases, Objects, and Development Environments

Further Reading

SAP Development System: A Critical Entry Point for Attacks

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Dangers in SAP Transport Management: Part 2

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Dangers in SAP Transport Management: Part 1

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Dangers in SAP Transport Management: An Intro

Learn More

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