Worried about SAP security on Azure? Don’t be

SAP is the most popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in the world and is critical to most businesses today. Two-thirds of global transactions involve an SAP system at vital touchpoints. SAP data often includes your organization’s most sensitive assets, such as intellectual property and financial and customer data—which needs to be guarded with vigilance.

As new ways of operating take shape—including the move toward more remote work—organizations face growing SAP security challenges. Migrating SAP to Azure brings game-changing benefits, but migration can also raise data security concerns. Massive amounts of data across multiple environments must be secured. Azure offers powerful security features—and each organization should configure security settings according to their needs, putting protocols in place to keep data safe.

Internal threats are as pressing as malware and ransomware, though they aren’t always top of mind. The key is to strike a balance: You need to manage security so that everyone in the organization can get the data they need to do their jobs, and you need to protect sensitive data from attacks.

User accounts, for example, should be defined by role with specific permissions to prevent unauthorized access. Security administrators should know who has what kind of access, review this information often, and have the tools to quickly change that access when needed.

Protection from external elements requires a sophisticated defense that detects threats in time, protects against attack, and offers robust data recovery.

Cybercriminals don’t sleep, and neither should data monitoring. An effective monitoring system should proactively detect suspicious behavior, with early alerts that provide a window of opportunity to stop threats in their tracks. NetApp offers advanced detection solutions such as NetApp^® Cloud Data Sense, which uses machine learning to analyze user behavior patterns and identify anomalies.

You need to protect your valuable SAP systems from outside threats like ransomware, malware, and viruses by using continuous, multilayered security across all environments.

Azure NetApp Files, a high-performance, native Azure file storage service, integrates built-in protection capabilities to create a worry-free environment for your SAP data. Data is online and durable due to highly available volumes and is encrypted at rest and in transit through a FIPS-140-2–compliant encryption mechanism for best-in-class data security. Not only is Azure NetApp Files certified for use with SAP HANA, its data protection is so powerful that SAP itself chose to run HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) on it.

As with all critical systems, SAP disaster recovery is an important element of security. Backup systems should banish security fears by automatically saving precious data—without taking up a lot of time or resources. Effective point-in-time backups support multiple recovery points, which minimize exposure to data loss. And if data is lost, every second counts, so backup systems should enable fast and seamless restoration of the data that’s needed to get SAP systems up and running.

Using Azure NetApp Files with NetApp Snapshot copies allows you to quickly back up your data and recover copies almost instantly without affecting performance, regardless of the amount of data you need to work with. Which means you don’t have to wait for peace of mind.

Our customers worldwide have had great success with Azure NetApp Files. Gas distribution company Italgas, for example, was able to reduce backup times from 15 hours to a mere 15 minutes.

SAP operations are simply too important to risk. With threats such as cyberattacks on the rise, you need strong SAP security measures if you’re going to sleep soundly. NetApp solutions offer SAP safeguards in spades—along with integrated, performance-enhancing data storage and management.

Want to learn more about how to protect SAP on Azure? Let’s talk.