Basis administration in the age of SAP HANA
Technical and non-technical skills
In many companies, the SAP system is the linchpin of everyday business. To ensure that the system is available at all times, an SAP Basis team ensures its smooth operation.
In the SAP Basis area, it is necessary to make temporary changes to the security settings of clients and systems in the course of system updates. You can use the system changeability variable to specify whether changeability of cross-client data, such as programs or menus, and cross-client customizing is allowed.
How relevant is SAP Basis?
This access method depends solely on the rights assigned to the user. System users: Users of this user group are comparable to SAP*. They act as administrator in the system. Therefore, they should be deactivated / set to inactive as soon as possible, as soon as the system operation is ensured. You should still be aware of the SAP ERP environment to address this security risk. In a HANA system, there are privileges instead of permissions. The difference is first of all in terms of terminology. Nevertheless, the permissions are assigned differently (directly / indirectly) via the assignment of roles. These are thus accumulations of privileges. As in older SAP systems, system users must be disabled and certain roles that already exist must be restricted. Compared to an SAP ERP system, small apps are allowed instead of large applications. In this case, attention should be paid to an individual authorisation. It should be a matter of course for users to have implemented secure password rules. Settings Securing the system also means securing the underlying infrastructure. Everything from the network to the host's operating system must be secured. When looking at the system landscape, it is striking that the new technology brings many connections that need to be secured. The SAP Gateway, which is responsible for the connection between backend and frontend, is also a security risk and must be considered. All security settings of existing and future components must be validated to HANA compatibility. Secure communication of connections is obtained when you restrict access where possible. Encryption of the data of a HANA system is disabled by default. Be sure to encrypt sensitive data anyway. Especially data that is archived. If an attack is made on your system, you should be able to run forensic analysis, so you should enable the audit log. Moreover, few users should have access to it.
Meanwhile, there are other ways to build consensus. But, for the most part, the following three options have proven effective as a consensus mechanism: 1) Proof of Work 2) Proof of Stake 3) Proof of Importance The differences are presented in another blog post. How do blocks form in a blockchain? Each block will build irrevocably on an older block. If you were to remove the block, you would also have to remove all blocks above it, which would destroy the entire chain of blocks. Because each new block also contains information from its predecessor block. This is very important for understanding the immutability of a blockchain. If you were to manipulate a block afterwards, you would have to adjust all the blocks that follow. The effort would be so infinitely large and expensive that such a manipulation can practically not be implemented. You can think of it as this. A blockchain arises from the cryptographically linked blocks (puzzles) full of transactions (puzzle pieces) and therefore cannot be changed without destroying the entire blockchain. For this reason, a blockchain is seen as an immutable transaction history agreed upon by a decentralised community. A blockchain is programmed to work with each miner on the longest part of the blockchain, as this is obviously the chain in which most of the work has been invested.
Tools such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" are extremely useful in basic administration.
In addition to the optimisation potential of Security Automation, which I explained in more detail in my last post, the E-Learning division also offers numerous possibilities for automation.
SAP Basis is the foundation of any SAP system. You can find a lot of useful information about it on this page: www.sap-corner.de.
Why is it important to consider independent transactions separately? Imagine that every one of your employees is allowed to create or change a client in the production system, or worse, both.