Planning
SF01 Logical file paths and names (client-dependent)
A well-cared-for emergency user concept enables the audit-proof allocation of extended permissions in combination with the assurance of daily operations in your company. This article first addresses the fundamental issues that require an emergency user approach. It then briefly explains how such a concept works in general and how we implement it. An Emergency User is normally used when tasks are temporarily taken over outside the initial field of activity. I described the different scenarios of when such a user can be used and how to deal with them in this blog post for you. Why is an emergency user approach important? There are several scenarios in which the use of an emergency user with extended rights is useful: In urgent cases, it is often necessary to be able to quickly make changes to the system that are outside the user's actual field of activity. A key user who has the necessary permissions is on vacation and needs a representation. The same user suffers short-term illness and his/her representative must take over his/her duties to ensure the operation. We recommend developing a concept for the short-term allocation of the additional permissions. This will ensure the implementation of the above scenarios. How does an emergency user approach work? An emergency user concept in SAP works fundamentally via a temporary assignment of additional rights to a specific user. After the tasks have been completed, the user is deprived of the rights. The tasks performed with the extended permissions are logged and can then be evaluated by an auditor. However, there are a few things to keep in mind: A process for granting special rights should be defined. It must be specified which users can get special rights. The time period for which users can request an emergency user should be limited.
If we look at the question of standardisation, this concerns not only the administrative side of IT products, but also the standardisation and simplification of IT products offered by the SAP basis. For this purpose, tools such as ITIL for standardised tasks and the development of IT product and IT service catalogues have already established themselves to the greatest extent possible. These clearly describe the IT services provided. In addition to the definition of the service to be provided, the clear description shall include the identification of disclaimers and conditions that must exist. Also part of the service description is a price that can be composed of fixed and variable parts. This simplification and bundling of the product portfolios should also reduce the administrative burden when ordering, activating, changing, terminating and, of course, invoicing. The description of the IT services and the associated development of an IT product catalogue is the basis for standardisation, whether the recipient is an external or internal customer (e.g. a business unit). One difficulty is the definition of IT products, i.e. the pooling of IT services and resources. An orientation towards the idea of cloud computing can help. The characteristics of cloud computing are the provision of standardised services in terms of performance and type of performance, results-orientated services, provision of performance to a wide range of service customers, scalability, transaction-based billing and high risk of IT service failure.
Some useful tips about SAP basis can be found on www.sap-corner.de.
Layer Description
In this article on SAP Security Automation I would like to take a look at the future of automated processes in the SAP Security area. For many companies, the topic of security automation still offers a lot of potential in terms of time savings and process optimisation. Our daily work environment offers numerous tasks that could be handled excellently automatically. For this reason, in this article I present two of the possibilities that already exist in the broad area of security automation. Security Automation via SAP Security Check The first option of Security Automation, which I want to introduce here, is the automatic verification of the existing permissions. Have you ever wondered who has critical permissions in your SAP system? And have you ever tried to do this by hand? Depending on the level of expertise and experience of the privilege administrator, this is a time-consuming work. If an audit is also announced and the SAP system is to be checked for critical permissions and segregation of duties, then it is very difficult to meet all requirements and secure the eligibility landscape in this respect. For this reason, various vendors provide solutions to automate the verification of the permission system with regard to critical permissions and segregation of duties using tool support. This allows permission administrators to use their valuable time to correct the errors rather than just looking for them. For example, we use a tool that runs through the verification of over 250 rules. We then get an evaluation of which rules are violated and which points are correct. A simple example of such rules is the use of the SAP_ALL profile. Another would be to grant the jump permission in debugging (S_DEVELOP permission object with the ACTVT = 02 field). These are two relatively simple examples of Security Check tools' rulebook. In addition, queries are also made, which are located in the field of Segregation of Duties. Using this tool allowed us to move from manual validation of critical permissions to an automatic process.
With all these tasks we can support you to compensate e.g. bottlenecks or failures as well as fast growth in your teams. We have resources that have been active in this environment for many years and have gained extensive experience. We are happy to assist you with these challenges.
The "Shortcut for SAP Systems" tool is ideal for doing many tasks in the SAP basis more easily and quickly.
In this context, responsible employees perform a number of classic tasks.
The freeware Scribble Papers puts an end to the confusing paper chaos. The tool is also suitable for storing, structuring and quickly finding text documents and text snippets of all kinds in addition to notes.
Ensuring the smooth operation of the SAP systems (ERP, BW) and SAP databases.