Migration to the Cloud Platforms
SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT (SME)
Site Reliability Engineering(SRE) is the equivalent of SAP Basis in the Google world. Ben Treynor, who has been with Google since 2003 and is considered the godfather of SRE, describes SRE as "what happens when you give operations tasks to a software engineer".
In practice, it is quite possible that the target specifications defined in the security concept do not match the current actual status. Therefore, especially with regard to SAP security, it must always be checked whether the necessary SAP basic settings also correspond to the minimum level. Although a manual check is possible, it is very time-consuming because the necessary regularizations have to be read, interpreted and technically implemented. The Security Architect - part of the Xiting Authorizations Management Suite (XAMS) software solution developed by Xiting - offers you the possibility to precisely examine the current status of the SAP Basis settings with the help of the integrated check mode, whereby it is also possible to check several systems via RFC, starting from a central system. The scope of the check of system settings and system security includes not only the SAP Basis settings presented here, but also other SAP Basis settings. The scope of the check mode can be extended by self-defined check IDs.
Individual SAP Basis and Database Service for your business software
If your system is already above SAP NetWeaver Release 7.0, then you must either import SAP Note 1731549 or a corresponding Support Package. Afterwards, when creating new users, it is no longer possible to assign user names that are only composed of variants of spaces or other invisible special characters. Important: Changes to already existing users with these names or their deletion option are not affected by this! The SAP Note also adds the customizing switch BNAME_RESTRICT, whereupon you can control yourself whether alternative spaces are allowed to appear in certain places in the user name. For this, the following values must be set in the customizing table PRGN_CUST: NO = The alternative spaces are still allowed in the user name. ALL = The character set is reduced to a defined range, excluding certain special characters because they have specific meanings in certain operating systems or databases. This predefined character set is: ABCDEFGHIJKLNMOPQRSTUVWXYZ_0123456789,;-§&()={[]}+#. FME = The letters F, M and E stand for Front, Middle and End. With an 'X' in this three-digit switch value you can now explicitly specify at which position in the user name no wide spaces and control characters may occur. All combinations are possible, e.g.: XME = None of these special characters may occur at the BEGINNING of the user name. XMX = In the user name none of these special characters may occur at the BEGINNING and at the END. FME = One of these special characters may occur at any position in the user name (this corresponds to the default setting, i.e. as if no entry was maintained in PRGN_CUST for the switch). SAP recommends the use of the value ALL.
Basically, an excellent IT knowledge is required. In addition, SAP administrators must of course be particularly competent in this area and be able to deal confidently with all issues relating to SAP solutions. Since they often also work in international companies, it is an advantage if they have a very good command of written and spoken English.
Tools such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" are extremely useful in basic administration.
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.
SAP Basis refers to the administration of SAP system that includes activities like installation and configuration, load balancing, and performance of SAP applications running on Java stack and SAP ABAP. This includes the maintenance of different services related to database, operating system, application and web servers in SAP system landscape and stopping and starting the system. Here you can find some useful information about SAP Basis: www.sap-corner.de.
In simple, clear system environments, many SAP Basis administrators help themselves with SAP CPS (Central Process Scheduling) and simple ABAP batch jobs that start operations or other jobs.