SAP has done nothing less than change the entire systems landscape for enterprises. The benefits it can bring have led to widespread adoption across the globe. One of the key benefits SAP brings to an enterprise is the ability to integrate the data both within the enterprise, and between it and it’s partners / competitors. In many cases organizations today are both partners and competitors at the same time. Think of wholesalers and distributors, SAP and Oracle, AT&T and BT, or two oil giants who have an upstream joint venture. These companies use SAP to integrate process between themselves for their mutual benefit. This ability to integrate, however, brings with it a particular risk – that of exposing their data to the un-authorized outside world.

Entire companies have been built up around highly guarded intellectual property and process secrets ... and could easily fall if this was breached. Therefore, keeping the security of the organization intact is one of the vital aspects of any SAP implementation.

SAP BASIS addresses all security issues by incorporating an authorization module. With increased potential for security breaches in the computer systems around the world, BASIS consultants face a tough task of maintaining the integrity and administering the security of SAP systems. Interoperability features of a SAP system makes this task a bit more difficult.

SAP security in an integrated environment can be viewed in the form of discrete components as shown below (figure 1).

Tight security is required for each of the above components (Network, Workstation, Operating System and Database) as a breach made in one area can compromise the entire system.

The scope of this article is SAP Application Security, which can be achieved with the help of SAP’s BASIS security application through the concept of authorization.

In SAP, security is administered for objects (profiles and authorizations). Users are only authorized to see or change the parts of the system required by their respective job responsibilities.