SAP Monitoring Tool Helps Improve SAP Security

SAP monitoring is the practice of proactively monitoring application servers and computer utilization in an IT environment that runs SAP systems. Since many organizations use SAP, specifically the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, SAP monitoring is a critical practice to help ensure network software is performing at or above the expected thresholds set by IT admins. 

By monitoring SAP systems on a regular basis, you can identify important information about the health of your systems, servers, connections, and critical applications. In fact, monitoring SAP systems should be completed daily. 

However, many SAP solutions utilize a three-tier client-server architecture. While this architecture is ideal for organizations that value scalability and flexibility, it can also make the monitoring process more difficult. Investing in an enterprise-grade SAP system monitoring tool can help improve the SAP monitoring process and streamline IT efforts.

A SAP transaction code, sometimes referred to as a “t-code”, is a series of letters and numbers that act as a shortcut key to access a desired SAP transaction. Users must enter a code into the SAP interface to access functions or run programs in SAP. Most transactions codes are generally four characters and can be entered directly into the transaction code field.

There are hundreds of thousands of SAP transaction codes. However, there are some commonly used transaction codes that are helpful to know:

• VA01 - Create Sales Order
• FS10N - Balance Display function
• ME23N - Display Purchase Order function
• F110 - Parameters for Automatic Payment function

Depending on the needs of your organization and individual departments, different transaction codes may be helpful.

It is important to identify users assigned to a specific SAP transaction code so IT admins can more easily identify and understand user role provisioning within SAP. With better insights, IT admins can improve the process of how they manage SAP user access. They can even leverage a user provisioning tool to help automate this process. With better user provisioning, IT admins can enforce access control by introducing protective policy checks and supervising emergency access. This also helps managers more easily identify and validate which users have access to SAP applications and system data.

Organizations often rely on SAP systems to process orders, efficiently, securely manage financial transactions, and offer real-time reporting to internal and external stakeholders, which is why admins need to know who has permission to what. To keep things secure, IT admins review and regularly assign roles and privileges to users. After all, users may need specific roles or the ability to schedule, start, or stop tasks — but the wrong person having permission could cause chaos.

Monitoring SAP with a dedicated tool can make a major difference, saving admins time and energy. After all, without SAP monitoring tools, they may lose track of users’ permissions or need to change access rights one at a time. Conversely, SAP system monitoring tools can help give admins visibility into and control over the systems that data users can access in SAP environments.

With the help of a SAP security tool, admins can easily search for security-critical SAP transaction codes and identify authorization paths. They’ll also receive alerts regarding multiple authorizations and can even configure the SAP system to monitor for user reading and editing permissions. For example, an admin might set up common business roles by selecting the appropriate SAP work centers users with a given role will be able to see, making it possible for them to change multiple users’ access rights simultaneously.

SAP monitoring tools like ARM can also help with managing self-service access requests, streamlining the user access review process, managing on-premise and cloud deployments of SAP systems, and automatically detecting intrusions.

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager can be leveraged as a SAP monitoring tool in many ways. For one, IT teams can use ARM to analyze user access rights across their SAP systems. With newly generated insights, admins can more quickly reduce the cybersecurity risk of unauthorized system access and identify potential data breaches. 

Additionally, ARM can help IT teams identify and manage risks by detecting suspicious access attempts. ARM also provides insight into SAP transaction codes and authorization paths, and allows integration with Active Directory for better SAP account management. ARM is designed to save IT teams time and resources by assigning permission management to data owners as opposed to requiring IT to manage all permission requests. With this added time, IT teams can concentrate more on tasks that can help improve the overall security posture of the organization.

As with all other IT systems, SAP systems require monitoring to ensure that they can operate continuously and efficiently. With SAP monitoring tools, admins can:

• Identify, analyze, and mitigate risks: Such tools provide real-time visibility, allowing administrators to detect potential issues and take corrective action before they escalate into major problems. This minimizes disruptions and increases reliability.
• Streamline user access management control: These tools offer granular insights into user activities and access privileges within the SAP environment, meaning admins can track user logins and data access patterns to better prevent unauthorized access.
• Demonstrate compliance: Being ready for audits is vital for any organization — and an SAP security tool can help. These solutions will track and audit system activities, providing organizations with the data they need for compliance reporting.
• Improve security: SAP system monitoring tools can also help boost your organization’s security. After all, you’ll be able to more easily detect and respond to unauthorized access, incorrect user privileges, suspicious user activities, and more.
• Gain transaction code insights: Monitoring SAP with a dedicated tool can also help you gain a better understanding of transaction codes. Not only will you be able to monitor transaction codes with SAP monitoring software, but you can also manage them.
• Recognize authorization paths and multiple authorizations: this solution can also provide admins with valuable information on authorizations. It can allow admins to easily visualize nested roles and authorization paths as well as recognize multiple authorizations.
• Improve SAP infrastructure and performance: Ultimately, SAP tools can give you the insights you need to identify issues and even proactively resolve them, reducing disruptions and optimizing performance.

Related Features:

• OneDrive Permissions Monitoring
• SharePoint Permissions Management
• SharePoint Audit Tool
• SharePoint Reporting Tool
• Simplify NTFS Permissions Management
• Exchange Auditing Software
• Exchange Management Tool
• Active Directory Reporting Tool
• Active Directory Auditing Tool
• Active Directory Management Tool

Related Tools:

• SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted & Security Observability
• Server Application Monitor