The Rising Tide of SAP Attacks
According to a recent survey of the SAPinsider community, the number of cyberattacks on SAP systems continues to rise, with a significant 92% of respondents reporting an attack in the past year. This underscores a crucial point: as SAP applications become more central to business operations, they are also becoming a top target for threat actors. Onapsis SAP Security research shows that over 23% of the data held in these systems is considered mission-critical, making the potential impact of a breach devastating.
Evolving Threats and Shifting Priorities
While traditional concerns like unpatched systems remain a challenge, the nature of these attacks is changing. This year’s survey reveals that organizations are most concerned about data exfiltration and attacks exploiting external connections. This marks a critical shift, as it highlights a move beyond simple system compromise to a focus on data theft. Other top threats include credential compromise, ransomware, and weak access controls.
The biggest challenges security teams face are keeping up with SAP updates, a lack of visibility, and ensuring proper segregation of duties. This indicates a growing gap between the speed of threats and the ability of internal teams to manage them effectively.
A Smarter Security Strategy
To combat these evolving threats, organizations are rethinking their security strategies and making targeted investments. The top drivers for a new cybersecurity approach are the need to protect sensitive data, pressure to defend against ransomware, and the imperative to keep critical systems online. This is reflected in where companies are investing, with the highest priorities being native SAP security tools, audit and monitoring, and vulnerability management.
How to Take Action
The survey points to three key recommendations for any organization looking to strengthen its SAP security posture:
- Gain Executive Support: Secure buy-in from leadership to ensure cybersecurity is a top priority, not just an IT task.
- Prioritize Data Protection: Focus on protecting the sensitive and confidential data within SAP systems, which is the ultimate goal of most modern cyberattacks.
- Define a Patching Plan: Create a clear, actionable plan to address patch backlogs and ensure systems are regularly updated to reduce a major security vulnerability.
For a comprehensive approach to managing these risks and building cyber-resilience, organizations can leverage the Onapsis Platform, which is purpose-built to help secure business-critical applications and is backed by our world-renowned threat intelligence.
