What is ERP Security?

Last Updated: 3/20/2026

For years, the broader cybersecurity industry has often overlooked the world’s most critical enterprise resources: the business-critical applications running essential functions for the largest commercial and governmental organizations. These Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems manage everything from supply chains and manufacturing to finance, sales, and human resources.

Despite their critical importance, business-critical ERP applications have historically fallen into a blind spot for most of the security community. However, with threat actors increasingly targeting these financial and operational cores, organizations need a dedicated ERP security strategy that protects their crown jewels.

An Overview of ERP Applications

With hundreds of thousands of implementations across the globe, ERP applications support the most critical business processes and house the most important information for the biggest organizations in the world. The vast majority of these large organizations have implemented ERP applications from one of the two market leaders: SAP and Oracle.

Organizations rely on these applications to support business processes such as payroll, treasury, inventory management, manufacturing, financial planning, sales, logistics, and billing. By their very nature, these applications host highly sensitive information, including financial results, manufacturing formulas, pricing, intellectual property, credit cards, and personally identifiable information (PII) from employees, customers, and suppliers.

Current Gaps in ERP Security

ERP systems, such as SAP and Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), are the operational engine of an organization. Yet despite the importance of these systems, they are often left unprotected against internal misuse and external attacks.

Just like any other software, ERP applications are susceptible to vulnerabilities that must be patched and maintained. However, organizations frequently struggle to apply security patches due to a few unique characteristics: complex system architecture, heavily customized functionality, a high number of integrations, and a general lack of specialized knowledge regarding ERP security.

The sheer size and complexity of securing ERP systems can be overwhelming. ERP environments consist of a wide array of elements, including processes and workflows, master data warehouses, an underlying computational infrastructure, and a large storage network. Furthermore, they share data with hundreds of other IT applications inside and outside of the organization. Many organizations do not have the visibility into these shared applications to understand what is happening within their ERP system.

These factors combine to make it difficult for ERP customers to stay up to date with security vulnerabilities, secure configurations, and critical patches. Unfortunately, this means that many organizations are unknowingly running highly insecure ERP applications.

The Evolving ERP Threat Landscape

With a large amount of sensitive data at stake and a host of exploited security vulnerabilities, it is no surprise that threat actors target these ERP applications. The need for ERP security has never been more urgent. Threat actors have the expertise to identify and exploit unprotected these business-critical applications. SAP and Onapsis found evidence of over 300 automated exploitations leveraging seven SAP-specific attack vectors and over 100 hands-on-keyboard sessions from a wide range of threat actors. The window for defenders is small and it is clear that cyber attackers have sophisticated knowledge of ERP applications. Onapsis Research Labs found that SAP applications are being weaponized within 72 hours of a patch release.. They are actively targeting and exploiting unsecured SAP applications through varied tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). 

The Business Impact of Unsecured ERP Systems

If not properly secured, ERP systems are vulnerable to both insider threats and external attacks. Critical assets can be exposed, and severe compliance violations may go undetected.

Because ERP systems contain an organization’s crown jewels, the data types most frequently targeted include sales, HR, financial records, and intellectual property. If such data falls into the wrong hands or is held for ransom, the operational, financial, and reputational impacts can be devastating.

Exploits targeting misconfigurations and vulnerabilities allow attackers to bypass standard IT controls and take full command of vulnerable systems. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to gain access to the ERP environment and perform malicious activities, including:

• Steal personal identifiable information (PII) from employees, customers, and suppliers
• Read, modify, or delete financial records
• Change banking details 
• Administer purchasing processes
• Disrupt critical business operations by corrupting data, shutting processes down completely, or deploying ransomware
• Delete or modify traces, logs, and other files

The broad range of possible digital ERP data is also key to many vital compliance mandates, including CCPA, GDPR, SOX, PCI-DSS, and the NIST and CMMC frameworks. The information compromised most often is the highest regulated in today’s business ecosystem – and most concerning is the popularity of sales, financial data, and PII. Protecting the integrity of this regulated data is a legal requirement.

Six Steps to Secure Your ERP Systems 

1. Implement a Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Program

Conventional tools such as firewalls and endpoint scanners are absolutely necessary, but while they cover system-level concerns, they do not secure the ERP application layer itself. An underlying operating system vulnerability may be detected, but an SAP custom code issue or an Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) application layer flaw will remain invisible.

With modern vulnerability management tools, security teams gain full visibility into all assets across the IT environment. This enables them to inventory systems, identify hidden vulnerabilities, and understand the true business impact of a flaw. A risk-based vulnerability management process that monitors users, activity, and application-layer settings saves significant time by allowing teams to focus on high-priority, exploitable risks.

2. Continuously Monitor for Internal and External Threats

Security teams typically implement defense-in-depth strategies, deploying security at the perimeter, network, and endpoint levels. However, standard network detection and response (NDR) or security information and event management (SIEM) tools are not uniquely fluent in ERP application logs. Organizations must employ specialized threat detection and response tooling that continuously monitors for compromised ERP credentials, unusual user behavior, and active exploit attempts.

3. Stay on Top of Software Updates

ERP systems should be updated regularly. Keeping your underlying software current ensures that known bugs and architectural flaws cannot be leveraged by attackers to leak or steal information.

4. Implement Timely Patch Management

Given the frequency of patch releases, the complexity of the patching process, and the massive size of ERP application landscapes, organizations often face a growing backlog of security patches. A manual patch management process is highly error-prone. Without an automated process, it is incredibly difficult to identify which systems are missing patches, prioritize the most critical fixes, and verify that patches were applied correctly.

5. Secure Custom Code

Ensuring internal developers are writing secure code is arduous with traditional tools. Custom code is brought into the ERP environment via transports, which adds significant complexity. Organizations need a way to verify that these transports will not introduce security, performance, or compliance issues into the production environment. Implementing an application security testing solution replaces time-consuming manual code reviews, enabling organizations to build security directly into the DevSecOps pipeline.

6. Utilize Targeted Threat Intelligence

Timely, specialized threat intelligence programs provide critical information about the current TTPs used by threat actors, allowing organizations to implement pre-patch protection. Actionable threat intelligence alerts security teams to new ransomware campaigns and provides the context required to design effective security controls.

ERP Security Solutions: The Onapsis Platform 

Securing complex SAP and Oracle landscapes often requires transitioning from manual audits and generic network tools to automated, application-specific monitoring. Purpose-built platforms address this by separating the workload into distinct functional areas.

For example, the Onapsis Platform divides these technical tasks across three specialized modules:

• Vulnerability Management (Onapsis Assess): This module scans the application layer to identify missing patches, system misconfigurations, and authorization flaws, replacing the need for manual system health checks.
• Threat Detection (Onapsis Defend): Instead of relying on generic network monitors, this tool analyzes ERP-specific application logs for suspicious activity and integrates with existing corporate SIEM systems to provide real-time alerts.
• Application Security Testing (Onapsis Control): This integrates directly into the DevSecOps pipeline to inspect custom code and transports, ensuring compliance and security issues are caught before they reach the production environment.

Ultimately, securing an ERP landscape is a core business requirement. By understanding the unique vulnerabilities of these platforms and implementing a comprehensive security strategy, organizations can protect their most sensitive data, maintain regulatory compliance, and ensure the continuous operation of their critical business processes in an increasingly hostile threat landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions About ERP Security

What is ERP security?

ERP security is the specific set of practices, processes, and tools designed to protect Enterprise Resource Planning systems from unauthorized access, data breaches, and operational disruption. Unlike basic IT security, it focuses heavily on the application layer to secure custom code, complex user authorizations, and system-level configurations.

Why are ERP applications frequently targeted by cyberattackers?

These systems house an organization’s most sensitive information, including financial records, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information (PII). A successful breach allows attackers to execute financial fraud, steal highly regulated data, or deploy ransomware to halt critical manufacturing and supply chain operations.

How does ERP security differ from traditional network security?

Traditional security tools like firewalls and endpoint detection solutions protect the perimeter and the underlying operating systems. ERP security specifically targets the application layer. It identifies complex misconfigurations, vulnerable custom code, and missing application-specific patches that standard network monitors simply cannot see.

What are the biggest challenges in securing SAP and Oracle environments?

The massive size and complexity of these landscapes make manual vulnerability management incredibly difficult. Organizations consistently struggle with a high volume of necessary security patches, heavily customized internal code, and intricate user authorization models. These factors often create a dangerous backlog of unpatched vulnerabilities.

How do ERP systems impact regulatory compliance?

Because ERP platforms process corporate financial transactions and store employee and customer PII, they fall directly under the scope of major compliance mandates like SOX, GDPR, and PCI-DSS. Failing to secure the ERP application layer can result in material weaknesses during financial audits and severe regulatory penalties for data privacy violations.