Authorizations in SAP systems: what admins should look out for
THE "TOP SEVEN"
First and foremost, legal principles must be stated and specific reference must be made to authorizations that are critical to the law and that may not be assigned (or at most may be assigned to emergency users). An example is the authorization "Debugging with Replace", to which the object S_DEVELOP with the values ACTVT = 02 and OBJTYPE = DEBUG legitimizes and over which data can be manipulated by main memory change. However, this would violate § 239 of the German Commercial Code, the so-called "erasure prohibition".
The S_START boot authorisation check is delivered inactively by SAP. If this test is activated in an AS-ABAP installation (see also SAP Note 1413011), this will affect all clients. Therefore, before you activate, it must be ensured that all affected users in the permission profiles associated with them have the necessary values in the S_START permission fields.
System trace function ST01
Far more damage, however, can be caused by too extensive authorizations. For example, an employee may be authorized to access data for which he or she is not authorized. In the worst case, criminal activity can cause economic damage. To prevent this, an authorization concept must be in place that describes how authorizations are to be created and assigned to users.
In addition to SAP standard software, do you also use custom ABAP programmes? Learn how the SAP Code Vulnerability Analyser can scan your customer code for potential security vulnerabilities and resolve them if necessary. Permission concepts, firewalls, anti-virus and encryption programmes alone are not enough to protect your IT infrastructure and IT systems against internal and external attacks and misuse. Some of the risks are identified by potential security vulnerabilities in the ABAP code, most of which cannot be addressed by downstream measures and therefore need to be addressed in the code itself. It should also be noted that the permission concepts used can be circumvented by ABAP code, which underlines the weight of security vulnerabilities in the ABAP code. While SAP is responsible for providing security information to help close security vulnerabilities in standard code, it is up to you to address security vulnerabilities in custom ABAP programmes. Companies are subject to a whole range of legal requirements on data protection and data integrity, and you can fulfil them as far as possible with the help of a new tool. The SAP Code Vulnerability Analyser is integrated into the ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) and thus available in all ABAP editors such as SE80, SE38, SE24, etc. Developers can use it to scan their code for vulnerabilities during programming and before releasing their tasks. This reduces testing costs and costs.
For the assignment of existing roles, regular authorization workflows require a certain minimum of turnaround time, and not every approver is available at every go-live. With "Shortcut for SAP systems" you have options to assign urgently needed authorizations anyway and to additionally secure your go-live.
You can also find some useful tips from practice on the subject of SAP authorizations on the page www.sap-corner.de.
SAP software is subject to high quality assurance standards - however, security vulnerabilities may occur in the code.
Evaluate the security advisories using the system recommendations immediately after the SAP Security Patch Day.