Thought Leadership

SAP Data Privacy: How Soterion’s Privacy Manager Addresses Key Challenges

December 6, 2024 By Soterion

When it comes to SAP security, ensuring robust data privacy measures is a growing concern. Organisations using SAP systems handle vast amounts of sensitive personal information, from employee details to customer data. With global data protection regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, PDPA, POPIA etc., ensuring that personal data is properly safeguarded within SAP environments is critical.

The challenge lies in balancing operational efficiency with strict privacy controls, particularly as SAP systems often deal with multiple users and large-scale data sets.

SAP environments are vulnerable to various security risks, such as excessive access privileges or data visibility gaps, which could expose sensitive information. The difficulty arises from identifying where this sensitive data resides, ensuring that only authorised personnel can access it, and continuously monitoring data access for compliance.

Without a proper data privacy strategy, organisations run the risk of breaches, non-compliance, and hefty fines, all while struggling to maintain operational efficiency. Soterion’s Data Privacy Manager is designed to help overcome these challenges by offering a tool to identify, categorise, and control access to sensitive data in SAP systems.

In this article, we will explore the common data privacy challenges faced by organisations running SAP, recommend best practices, and demonstrate how Soterion’s solution can help address these issues. We’ll also discuss how effective controls depend on the seamless integration of people, processes, technology, and design.

Furthermore, effective access risk management within SAP security and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) involves a range of control activities, extending beyond data privacy. Let’s take a brief look at these control activities.

Control Activities to Mitigate SAP Access Risk

While a certain level of risk is inevitable – particularly regarding Segregation of Duty (SoD) conflicts due to resource constraints – the true value of a GRC program lies in establishing robust measures to mitigate these risks. By implementing the following control activities, organisations can proactively manage and reduce the risks associated with SAP user access.


Now, let’s take a closer look at data privacy.

Data privacy and the role of people, process, technology, and design

The effectiveness of data privacy controls relies on the integration of people, processes, technology, and design. Achieving success requires identifying the right individuals, establishing well-defined processes, selecting appropriate technology, and building a robust design foundation.

In the sections below, we examine common data privacy challenges faced by organisations and offer key considerations for addressing these issues.


People

Challenges

  • Identifying appropriate owners to effectively manage the organisation’s privacy risk exposure.
  • Ensuring that risk owners have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities in managing and safeguarding sensitive data.
  • Providing risk owners with the necessary support and resources to identify, monitor, and implement data privacy risk controls and mitigation measures.

Considerations

  • Organisations should implement training and awareness programs to help employees understand the importance of privacy data and the necessary steps to protect personal information.
  • Clearly define employees’ roles and responsibilities concerning the protection of personal information and oversight of compliance efforts to manage privacy-related risks.
  • Leadership must commit to supporting and guiding the organisation by setting a strong tone that emphasises the significance of privacy data and responsible handling practices.

Process

Challenges

  • Organisations lack clear guidelines within their data management policies on how personal information is collected, processed, stored, and purged.
  • Current business processes often collect large amounts of personal information that may not align with the specific purposes for which the data was intended to be collected and processed.
  • Insufficient enforcement of strict access controls and periodic reviews for authorised employees accessing sensitive data and personal information.
  • Absence of well-defined incident response plans that outline the necessary steps for addressing incidents and data breaches.

Considerations

  • Organisations should document comprehensive policies and frameworks to guide employees on proper data management practices. These policies must detail how privacy data is to be collected, processed, stored, and purged.
  • The policies should also establish clear data minimisation procedures to ensure that only the minimum amount of personal information necessary for the specific processing purpose is collected.
  • Strict access control measures must be implemented to ensure that only authorized employees have access to sensitive and personal information. Regular reviews of these access controls should be conducted to minimise the organisation’s privacy risk exposure.
  • Organisations must proactively prepare for incidents and data breaches by establishing a well-defined incident response plan or playbook.

Technology

Challenges

  • Many software solutions do not provide capabilities to manage SAP Data Privacy Risks
  • There is no monitoring of the sharing or unauthorised access of sensitive and personal information.
  • Current software lacks functionality to perform access risk reviews and access re-certifications.
  • Data access and data usage are not being monitored or audited.

Considerations

  • Organisations should encrypt privacy data both in-transit and at-rest to minimise risk exposure. Additionally, privacy data should be anonymised where applicable and appropriate.
  • Find software solutions that can not only help organisations to identify where personal data is stored, but also help to manage access to it.
  • Software should support access risk reviews and access re-certifications to help mitigate the organisation’s risk exposure effectively.
  • Continuous, real-time monitoring and auditing of privacy data access and usage are crucial for detecting and responding to potential privacy risks. Leveraging advanced analytics and artificial intelligence can enhance the organisation’s monitoring capabilities.

Design

Challenges

  • Existing systems and processes were not designed with a focus on minimising the organisation’s privacy risk exposure.
  • Current systems and processes lack capabilities for privacy notices and do not include user-friendly consent mechanisms for users.
  • Aging systems and infrastructure do not support advanced security features, such as data encryption, anonymisation, data portability, or secure data storage capabilities.

Considerations

  • Organisations must incorporate the principle of privacy-by-design in the development and enhancement of new or existing SAP systems and processes to ensure agility and innovation.
  • Systems should be developed with a user-centric approach to foster trust and transparency, incorporating functionality for clear privacy notices and user-friendly consent mechanisms.
  • Systems must include advanced data security features, such as privacy data encryption, anonymisation, portability, and secure storage capabilities, to uphold the integrity and confidentiality of personal data.

How does Soterion help organisations overcome these data privacy challenges?


  • Soterion enables organisations to discover, identify, remediate, and mitigate data privacy risks within SAP. The Soterion Data Discovery tool helps locate SAP custom tables and fields that contain privacy data.
  • Soterion provides comprehensive privacy access risk reports, including usage statistics, to support business process owners in making informed access requests and review decisions.
  • Soterion provides detailed reporting on sensitive SAP tables and fields, identifying which SAP users have access to sensitive personal information.
  • Soterion supports the review of access rights and facilitates access re-certifications for authorised employees with access to sensitive and personal information within SAP.
  • Soterion generates summaries of data subject records for vendors, customers, and business partners in SAP, clearly distinguishing between EU and non-EU records in the reporting.

Watch Soterion’s Data Privacy Manager Demo Video

Key Benefits of Soterions Data Privacy Manager

  • Streamlined Compliance: Easily comply with stringent data regulations by identifying and managing personal data within SAP, ensuring adherence to data protection laws. 
  • Proactive Privacy Measures: Embed data privacy directly into your operations with our comprehensive approach, facilitating a culture of data privacy by design. 
  • Seamless Integration: Integrate data privacy seamlessly into your existing security program, enhancing your overall cybersecurity posture. 
  • Mitigated Risks: Minimise exposure to data privacy penalties and fines by proactively monitoring and controlling access to sensitive data, safeguarding your organisation’s reputation and financial well-being. 

Feel free to email us on [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to know more. We will gladly assist with a demo to see how we can help.

You may find this interesting