Monitoring High Privileged User Activity In PeopleSoft And SAP Using Appsian360

We are in the midst of a perfect storm of ERP security calamity: the greatest work from home experiment colliding with historic levels of employee churn and unemployment. Hackers are exploiting the situation by launching phishing, spear-phishing, and other social engineering attacks at remote workers to gain access to privileged user accounts and email passwords.

The increased threat surface and hacker activity mandate that companies deploy a strong security posture at the identity perimeter, using tools such as virtual private networks (VPN) and adaptable multi-factor authentication (MFA). However, limiting security to user access and authentication can leave organizations at risk of malicious activity when, not if, a privileged user account is compromised.

Unfortunately, today’s legacy on-premise SAP and PeopleSoft systems simply do not provide organizations the granular visibility and context of user access and data usage they need in real-time to make proactive and strategic decisions. This lack of visibility and reliance on static controls to ensure your most critical data isn’t compromised means that many organizations are flying blind.

Monitoring Privileged User Activity Must Be Part of a Strong Security Posture

The issue with traditional ERP logging and analytics is that it focuses on troubleshooting errors and scanning for broad system vulnerabilities. They were not designed for understanding user behavior, data access, and usage. In addition to ensuring a strict authentication process, companies need to layer in the ability to monitor privileged user activity continuously.

Using a layered-defense approach, organizations can proactively mitigate many of the risks associated with the increased interest in corporate networks and user accounts. A strict authentication process on its own is no longer acceptable. Actively monitoring privileged account activity is a critical way of identifying that an external threat has entered the network, compromised an account, and is ultimately engaged in fraud or theft.

Granular Privileged User Activity to Monitor

Organizations can set fine-grained access controls all day long. For example, organizations may be able to apply time-based ABAC for standard users, since the general human resources employee likely works during daytime hours, and you have visibility into which user accessed an application. Unfortunately, if you do not have a granular-level view into precisely what a user accessed, then you are missing a significant part of the data security puzzle.  

I’m sure you can think of a list of all Tier 1, highly sensitive data fields you want to watch closely. A shortlist includes C-suite salary information, social security numbers, bank account information, national ID number, passport number, visa permit number, driver’s license number, etc.

Continuously monitoring privileged user activity and behavior at the granular level provides valuable visibility into how users engage with data and what they do with their access. For example, application-level logging can’t track or show you if a hacker or malicious insider changes employee direct deposit information to route that week’s payroll run into an offshore account. Only field-level logging can show you how much “over access” users may have or if they are engaged in irregular activity.

With this information, organizations can review whether a certain activity was necessary and document the findings. By tracking the activity back to the user, the organization proves governance and proactively protects data.

Appsian360: Monitor ERP Activity for High Privilege Users

Using Appsian360 to monitor privileged user activity, you get a 360-degree view of what is happening around your ERP data as well as full visibility into exactly how your ERP data is being accessed – by whom, from where, on what, and why. From there, you can map out a targeted incident response before damages become catastrophic.

Your organization needs to be in a constant and vigilant state of security when it comes to monitoring privileged user account activity, especially in these times of excessive employee churn and remote access. Unfortunately, doing so in your ERP system is a manual process that needs to be addressed frequently.

Request a demo of Appsian360 to see for yourself how your organization can actively monitor privileged user activity and mitigate the risks associated with a compromised account or malicious insider.