CISOs' 2023 Planning Guide for ERP Applications

ERP systems, such as SAP and Oracle applications, run essential business functions and contain an organization’s most valuable data from HR and customer information to intellectual property and company financials. Despite their importance, security teams often lack complete visibility into their ERP threat landscape and are unable to understand the true risk caused by undetected vulnerabilities and obfuscated suspicious activity. This has become increasingly dangerous as attacks against business-critical applications are quickly accelerating in number and frequency. One small example of this was a published threat report from SAP and Onapsis documenting evidence of more than 300 successful exploitation attempts against unsecured SAP applications, pointing to cybercriminals’ clear understanding of ERP applications.

Although we may see a global recession in 2023, cyberattacks don’t slow down just because the economy is. As Onapsis research shows, threat actors continue to grow their technical knowledge of business-critical ERP applications and are applying common tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) more quickly to the “crown jewels” of organizations worldwide. To combat this, Forrester’s 2023 Security & Risk Planning Guide recommends CISOs consider increasing investment in business applications. CISOs should look to ramp up the deployment of business-critical application security tools as the number of attacks against these systems continues to grow exponentially. With the general application security market expected to reach $22.54 billion by 2028 (up from $6.95 billion in 2021), it’s evident that organizations are already recognizing the increasing need to protect their enterprise crown jewels.

When securing ERP applications, it’s no different from other areas of cybersecurity: it’s essential to have an offensive security team fueling you with the right threat intelligence to make the right decisions and mitigate risk. Forrester also recommended that CISOs channel investment in operational technology (OT) threat intelligence. Considering how so many ERP applications from SAP and Oracle are connected to OT systems across the organization’s value chain (as well as the Internet and customer-facing portals), the threat of breach due to interconnected risk is real.

The Onapsis Research Labs is the world’s leading team of security experts who combine their deep knowledge of critical ERP applications and decades of threat research experience to deliver impactful security insights and threat intelligence focused on business applications. Our product suite is automatically updated with latest threat intelligence and other security guidance from the Onapsis Research Labs. This provides customers with advanced notification on critical issues, comprehensive coverage, improved configurations and pre-patch protection ahead of scheduled vendor updates, keeping our customers ahead of the worst attacks on their most critical systems.

Learn more about The Onapsis Platform for ERP applications.