Overview
Cyber breaches have become a persistent and escalating threat to global enterprises. Attacks stemming from malicious code, advanced persistent threats, and inadequate access controls routinely result in business disruption, reputational damage, regulatory penalties, and the loss of intellectual property. At the same time, enterprises face mounting pressure to make critical business data more accessible to support global collaboration, shared services, cloud adoption, and mobile workforces.
SAP systems sit at the heart of many of these challenges. They contain some of the enterprise’s most sensitive and valuable data, including financial records, intellectual property, product designs, and regulated personal information. As SAP environments expand across geographies and integrate with cloud platforms and mobile devices, traditional role-based access controls alone are no longer sufficient to manage modern cyber security risks.
The NextLabs Cyber Security Solution for SAP Data addresses this challenge by enabling enterprises to centrally manage fine-grained, attribute-based access and usage controls for SAP data—both inside and outside of SAP. Built as an SAP-endorsed solution and integrated with SAP GRC Access Control, the solution helps organizations protect critical data throughout its lifecycle while improving cyber security posture and regulatory compliance.
Business and Security Challenges
Enterprises across industries such as Oil & Gas, Aerospace and Defense, High Tech, Life Sciences, Energy, and Industrial Manufacturing face a common set of cyber security challenges related to SAP data:
- Expanding attack surfaces due to global deployments, cloud access, and mobile devices
- Overly broad access entitlements that expose sensitive SAP data to unnecessary risk
- Limited visibility into how data is accessed and used, especially once it leaves SAP
- Manual and fragmented policy management, making consistent enforcement difficult
- Growing compliance pressure from cyber security frameworks and regulatory mandates
- Increased insider risk, including misuse of privileged access and unauthorized data sharing
These challenges are compounded by the need to balance security with business agility. Organizations must protect sensitive SAP data without disrupting critical business processes or slowing productivity.
The NextLabs Cyber Security Solution for SAP Data
The NextLabs Cyber Security Solution for SAP Data is designed to help enterprises strengthen cyber security while enabling flexible, global access to SAP systems. The solution uses NextLabs Information Risk Management technology and integrates tightly with SAP GRC Access Control to deliver centralized, policy-driven protection for SAP data.
The solution allows organizations to define, manage, and enforce information security policies that govern not only who can access SAP data, but also how that data can be used, shared, and distributed. These controls persist even as data leaves SAP, ensuring continuous protection across the extended enterprise.
By extending SAP’s native authorization model with dynamic, attribute-based access control, the solution enables more precise and context-aware security decisions—reducing cyber risk without sacrificing business efficiency.
Key Capabilities
Centralized, Fine-Grained Policy Management
The solution enables organizations to centrally define and manage information security policies for SAP data. Policies leverage user identity, SAP roles, and additional attributes such as nationality, geographic location, and business context to make fine-grained authorization decisions.
Integrated with SAP GRC Access Control, the solution builds on existing role and identity governance processes while extending them with dynamic policy evaluation. This ensures that access decisions are consistently enforced across SAP applications and user interfaces.
Attribute-Based Access Control for SAP
NextLabs extends SAP authorization to support attribute-based access control for SAP business objects. Access to sensitive data can be dynamically evaluated based on multiple factors, including:
- User identity and role
- Organizational and geographic attributes
- Type and sensitivity of the data
- Access channel (SAP GUI, Portal, mobile, etc.)
This approach enables organizations to enforce data segregation policies, manage privileged user access, and prevent inappropriate exposure of critical information.
Automated Data Classification and Persistent Protection
The solution supports automated classification of SAP data using inheritance, association, or storage location. This significantly reduces the effort required to identify and label sensitive information, ensuring that critical data is consistently protected.
Once classified, data remains persistently protected throughout its lifecycle. Protection follows the data even when it is exported from SAP, shared with external parties, or stored outside the enterprise—helping to minimize the risk of data loss or leakage.
Rights Management Inside and Outside SAP
Policy-based rights management ensures that SAP data is protected not only at the point of access, but also during usage and sharing. Organizations can define policies that control actions such as viewing, copying, printing, and forwarding sensitive data.
These controls apply whether data is accessed through SAP GUI, SAP Portal, easy DMS, cFolders, or mobile devices, providing consistent enforcement across all supported channels.
User Awareness and Contextual Guidance
The solution improves security awareness by providing users with real-time, context-based messages during data access and usage. These messages help educate users about security policies, reduce unintentional violations, and reinforce proper data handling practices without interrupting workflows.
Centralized Logging and Audit Visibility
All authorization decisions and data access events are centrally logged, providing a global view of how critical SAP data is accessed and used. This centralized audit trail supports compliance reporting, internal monitoring, and forensic analysis in the event of a security incident.
Alignment with Cyber Security Frameworks
Improving cyber security requires a holistic, lifecycle-based approach. Industry frameworks such as the NIST Cyber Security Framework and ISO 27002 emphasize the need to Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover from cyber security events.
The NextLabs Cyber Security Solution for SAP Data supports these principles by:
- Identifying and classifying critical SAP data
- Protecting data through fine-grained access and usage controls
- Detecting policy violations through centralized monitoring
- Supporting response and investigation with detailed audit trails
- Enabling recovery by ensuring controlled and accountable data usage
As an SAP-endorsed business solution, it integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP Core Component (ECC), SAP GRC Access Control, and other core SAP modules to deliver comprehensive protection for mission-critical data.
Business Benefits
The NextLabs Cyber Security Solution for SAP Data delivers measurable business and security benefits, including:
- Improved cyber security posture through fine-grained, attribute-based access control
- Reduced risk of SAP data loss, even as data leaves SAP systems
- Simplified policy management with centralized definition and enforcement
- Improved compliance with cyber security mandates and regulatory requirements
- Enhanced user awareness through real-time, contextual security guidance
- Greater visibility into data access and usage across the enterprise
- Stronger protection of intellectual property and sensitive business data
By automating information security processes and embedding protection directly into SAP workflows, the solution helps organizations reduce risk while maintaining operational agility.
Deployment and Getting Started
NextLabs follows a proven deployment methodology that combines expert product knowledge with best-practice services. During implementation, organizations are assisted with:
- Identifying and classifying critical SAP data
- Defining access control, data segregation, and usage policies
- Integrating with SAP GRC Access Control
- Deploying enforcement across SAP applications and interfaces
- Transferring knowledge to internal teams for ongoing operation
This structured approach ensures rapid value realization and long-term success.
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