Your SAP infrastructure hosts applications and processes that are critically important to your business operations. If it goes down, or your data is compromised in a cyberattack, you’ll experience unexpected costs and real operational risks.

Cybercriminals know SAP is business-critical, which makes it a prime target for cyberthreats of all kinds. Zero-day attacks that exploit undiscovered vulnerabilities are growing. At the same time, organizations are deploying increasingly distributed IT networks incorporating a mix of traditional data centers, public cloud, edge computing, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This all significantly increases the potential cyberattack landscape.

SAPinsider recently released a Cybersecurity Report providing insight into how SAP community members rank the top potential cybersecurity threats to their systems. Ransomware was number one, followed by compromised credentials and unpatched systems. The only way to protect yourself against these and other cyberthreats is to ensure your entire SAP platform is truly secure.

Here are 5 critical considerations for assessing your security needs.

1. Secure, Reliable SAP Operating System

It goes without saying that the OS underpinning your SAP infrastructure must be reliable, with built-in features that enable you to achieve high availability in both virtual and physical environments. But it is also important to seek features that contribute to operational excellence, such as best practices built into the code to automate error-prone manual tasks. This makes it easier to monitor and maintain your SAP platform and significantly reduces operational risk. Easy-to-use automation tools and wizards, complemented by system management and monitoring tools, also contribute to ensuring operational excellence while using an OS endorsed by SAP with premium certification ensures the reliability of the platform.

2. Key Security Certifications

The OS supporting your SAP infrastructure should have the highest levels of security and cryptographic certification. Some of the key certifications to look for are the FIPS 140-2 U.S. government security standard for validating cryptographic modules; the Common Criteria EAL4+ software supply chain certification; and the U.S. government’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) certification. A Linux OS with these certifications provides the best possible defense against cyber attackers and helps minimize risks to your business operations.

3. Integration with SAP Platform Security Features

It is important that your OS integrates closely with SAP-specific security solutions such as the SAP HANA firewall, SAP Antivirus, and SUSE Trento, an open-source, cloud-native web console that monitors your entire SAP stack and helps enforce best practices. Your OS vendor should also have hardening guides available for SAP HANA, which help ensure you are following security best practices.

4. Vulnerability and Patch Management Tools

Management tools that give you a centralized view of vulnerabilities and threats are key to improving the security of your entire mixed Linux environment. They ensure you can address potential security issues before they become a problem.

Support for live patching is another important tool, enabling you to immediately apply patches for zero-day vulnerabilities without rebooting your servers. This avoids service downtime and keeps your customers happy.

Patch staging, which allows you to reliably test patches before running them in your production environment, is another valuable feature that helps ensure your IT environment remains secure and your systems stay online.

5. Security Across the Entire SAP Landscape

No security implementation can protect your SAP landscape if it doesn’t cover the entire IT infrastructure, including containerized and edge environments. Tools that help your DevOps team develop secure containers are a necessity, as are solutions designed to manage edge devices and integrate security across the entire technology stack, including your OS, applications, and Kubernetes layers. Finally, a Zero Trust Container Security Platform and a Kubernetes manager unify security, policy, and user management across your environment, while simplifying multi-cluster operations.

Secure SAP with SUSE

SUSE covers all the bases for securing your SAP landscape, proven by over 20 years of experience in the SAP ecosystem, and 85% market share in HANA implementations. SUSE is trusted by organizations around the world to secure their high-availability infrastructure. Throughout the years we have built close relationships with the entire SAP ecosystem.

SUSE secures your SAP platform from the core with SAP-specific features and industry-recognized certifications. SUSE automation tools and Best Practices as Code help eliminate error-prone manual tasks, minimizing the risk of misconfigurations. Live patching, comprehensive management tools, and monitoring ensure your systems will always be available.

Choosing SUSE gives you the ability to secure your entire SAP infrastructure, minimize operational risks, and contribute to the success of your organization.

Secure your SAP platform