Mitigation of SAP Authorization Risks

SAP ERP systems are the core of many medium and large businesses these days. These systems administer Finance, Payroll, Customer Relationship Management, Human Resources and so on. Control of these systems is handled by a concept called SAP Authorizations (also referred to as authorizations or authorization objects). These authorizations establish what are referred to as roles. Roles determine exactly what permissions a given user has in a SAP system. It is a popular opinion amongst SAP experts that defining and maintaining authorizations is one of the largest and most complex tasks of a SAP system implementation. When authorizations are not properly managed, SAP security suffers. Instead of system being secured like a solid wall, it is more like a slice of Swiss cheese.