Strengthen SAP Security for NIS2 Compliance

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From Moral Obligation to Legal Liability

The NIS2 Directive marks a fundamental shift in European cybersecurity regulation. It transforms cyber resilience from a technical best practice into a strict legal obligation with personal liability for senior management.
For organizations relying on SAP, the stakes are even higher. Because SAP systems power critical supply chains, financial operations, and essential services, any disruption here is almost guaranteed to be classified as a “significant incident” under NIS2.

  • Stricter Accountability: Senior management can now be held personally liable for non-compliance, including temporary bans from management roles.
  • Mandatory Reporting: Significant incidents must be reported within 24 hours. Without deep visibility into SAP, meeting this timeline is nearly impossible.
  • Business Continuity: Failure to comply can result in the suspension of business operations, severe fines, and loss of customer trust.

Onapsis security solutions simplify your path to compliance. We provide the automated assessments, deep forensics, and supply chain security needed to satisfy NIS2 requirements for your most critical assets.

NIS vs. NIS2: What Has Changed?

NIS

  • Adopted in 2016 as the first EU-wide legislation on cybersecurity.
  • Focused on operators of essential services (OES) and digital service providers (DSPs).
  • Limited to sectors like energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructures, health, water, and digital infrastructure.
  • Allowed varied implementation across Member States.
  • Required OES and DSPs to implement appropriate security measures.
  • Incidents had to be reported without undue delay.
  • Enforcements and penalties varied across Member States with potential inconsistencies.
  • No specific requirements for certification and regular audits.
  • Limited focus on the security of supply chains and third-party services.

NIS2

  • Adopted in 2022 – built upon original NIS directive.
  • Includes more sectors and types of entities such as public administration, waste management, postal and courier services, chemicals, and food production.
  • Introduces a distinction between Essential Entities (previously Operators of Essential Services) and Important Entities. Essential Entities are subject to stricter requirements, while Important Entities have more flexible obligations.
  • Significant incidents must be reported within 24 hours, with detailed follow-up reports within 72 hours and a final report within one month.
  • Regular audits and certification to ensure compliance with NIS2 standards.
  • Enhances risk management requirements, including incident response, supply chain security, and vulnerability handling.
  • Stricter fines and penalties enforced for non-compliance.

How Onapsis Secures Your Path to NIS2

Meeting NIS2 standards requires more than just a firewall; it requires a proactive, layered defense for your business-critical applications.

  • The NIS2 Requirement: Organizations must address security risks in their supply chain and development processes.
  • How We Help: Onapsis secures your SAP development lifecycle (DevSecOps) by automatically scanning custom code and transports. We identify vulnerabilities and “Trojan horse” risks before they enter your production environment, minimizing your attack surface.

  • The NIS2 Requirement: “Significant incidents” must be reported within 24 hours.
  • How We Help: When an attack occurs, general security tools often fail to see inside SAP. Onapsis provides deep, application-layer visibility and forensics. We help you quickly identify the “who, what, and when” of an incident, enabling you to mitigate threats effectively and meet strict reporting deadlines.

  • The NIS2 Requirement: Regular audits and appropriate technical measures to manage risk.
  • How We Help: Manual reviews cannot keep pace with the scale of SAP. We automate vulnerability assessments and configuration checks, delivering immediate insights into your security posture to ensure you are always audit-ready.
Why Choose Onapsis

Navigating the NIS2 Directive Whitepaper

Building SAP security into your organization helps protect your systems, processes, technology, and personnel, helping you navigate the complexities of NIS2 compliance with ease. Download the whitepaper to learn more about:

  • What is the NIS2 Directive?
  • Key Differences between NIS and NIS2
  • The consequences of non-compliance
  • How you can better achieve NIS2 compliance through SAP security
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The Onapsis Advantage

Why trust Onapsis with your NIS2 compliance strategy?

SAP Endorsed App:

We are the only application security and compliance vendor endorsed by SAP, ensuring our platform works seamlessly with your existing architecture.

Onapsis Research Labs

Our solutions are powered by the world’s leading SAP threat research team, giving you protection against the latest adversarial tactics and zero-day threats.

15+ Years of Expertise:

With over a decade of experience in both SAP and InfoSec, we bridge the gap between security teams and SAP Basis teams.

Deep Visibility

We provide the granular insights required for the 24-hour reporting window that general IT security tools simply cannot match.

Frequently Asked Questions

The NIS2 Directive is an EU-wide legislation on cybersecurity aimed to create a more comprehensive and effective framework for the protection of critical infrastructure and digital services.

The NIS2 Directive introduces new requirements in four overarching areas: risk management, corporate accountability, reporting obligations, and business continuity. To learn more about the obligations and consequences to adhere to, download our whitepaper!

All EU member states and their 15 sectors of critical infrastructure and essential services, estimated to affect 160k+ companies.

Organizations can face operational impacts such as:disruption of services, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust. They could also be legally penalized as well. In addition, there are financial consequences: 

  • Essential entities: at least up to €10 million or 2% of the worldwide annual turnover
  • Important entities: at least up to €7 million or 1.4% of the worldwide annual turnover

Yes, senior management can be held liable for breaches on top of potential fines and be temporarily banned from management roles. Criminal sanctions can be taken against top management. Corrective measures can be forced by authorities such as conducting security audits, or undergoing external reviews and placed on a suspension of activities until appropriate compliance measures are put into effect.

Onapsis specifically addresses the “application security” and “incident response” aspects of NIS2 for your most critical systems:

  • Baseline Protection: We help you implement the required “appropriate technical measures” by hardening SAP configurations and patching vulnerabilities.
  • Supply Chain Security: We scan code and transports to ensure no malicious elements enter your landscape.
  • Incident Notification: Our deep forensics capabilities allow you to quickly scope an attack, providing the data needed for the mandatory 24-hour Early Warning Report.

Further Reading

Want a more in-depth exploration? Start with these related pieces, then visit our Resources page for more.

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