Industry: Apparel Manufacturing
Company Size: 10k+ employees>5B revenue
Customer Profile
A large international apparel manufacturer needed to expand its operations into new regions by deploying a new SAP system in the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), a common project for companies managing the complexities of SAP security for retail manufacturing. For their first-ever cloud implementation, the company partnered with Onapsis to gain critical visibility and enable a “trust, but verify” approach to their new environment, ensuring a secure cloud migration and operation.
The Challenge: Gaining Visibility in a New Cloud Environment
While moving to SAP HEC offered performance benefits, having a business-critical SAP instance outside of their own data centers for the first time raised major security concerns. To succeed, the manufacturer needed to overcome several key challenges:
- Gaining visibility into an SAP HEC operational environment managed by a third party.
- Verifying that the cloud provider was adhering to the manufacturer’s internal security baselines and contractual obligations.
- Navigating the shared responsibility model for a cloud implementation without having direct control over the infrastructure.
- Establishing a “trust, but verify” capability to continuously monitor risk in their new cloud-based SAP instance.
The Solution: The Onapsis Platform for “Trust, but Verify”
The apparel manufacturer chose Onapsis as a mandatory security control for their SAP HEC implementation. The Onapsis Platform provided the exact “trust, but verify” capability the project required by delivering:
Deep Visibility into the Cloud Environment
Onapsis provided direct insight into the SAP HEC operational environment and system configurations, which the manufacturer otherwise would not have had.
Continuous Vulnerability & Threat Monitoring
By providing continuous insight into the new cloud instance, the platform empowered the organization to manage risk to their business-critical supply chain. This included comprehensive vulnerability management to assess for security vulnerabilities, missing patches, and misconfigurations, as well as real-time threat detection to monitor for active threats.
Security Baseline Verification
The manufacturer was able to use the data and insights from Onapsis to verify that their cloud instance was being secured according to their own internal security standards and contractual agreements with the provider.
The Results: Confident and Secure Cloud Operations
With Onapsis, the manufacturer successfully navigated its first SAP cloud implementation, gaining the visibility and assurance needed to protect its critical supply chain.
Results at a Glance
- Complete visibility into their SAP HEC cloud environment’s security posture.
- Enabled a “trust, but verify” approach to manage their third-party cloud provider.
- Proactive risk monitoring to identify and address issues without waiting to be notified by the provider.
- Minimized business disruptions by protecting the security and integrity of their critical supply chain.
“We knew moving our SAP instance to a cloud environment would introduce new risks and we needed a solution to support the shared security model. Only Onapsis provides visibility into the SAP HEC operational environment so we can ‘trust, but verify’ that our system is secured to our standards. We can now continually monitor risk, ensure the integrity and security of our supply chain and protect our business.”
– CISO, Apparel Manufacturer
A Blueprint for Secure Cloud Migration
This manufacturer’s success provides a clear model for securing your own cloud journey. Their key to success was adopting a “trust, but verify” approach. Key takeaways for your organization include:
- Build security in from the start of any cloud project to avoid costly delays.
- Gain independent visibility into your cloud provider’s environment to ensure your security standards are being met.
- Continuously monitor your cloud SAP instance for new threats and vulnerabilities post-migration.