#erp data security

ERP systems store critical business data, making security a top priority. This blog explains key ERP data security challenges, common risks like cyberattacks and unauthorized access, and proven solutions such as role-based access, encryption, MFA, and regular backups to protect business operations.

The way we work changed radically in 2020, with the pandemic of COVID-19 spreading like wildfire. Work from home is now an integral part of our lives. This new reality requires organizations to have stable and efficient remote access to essential apps and resources for work. As part of that, Oracle PeopleSoft apps that are commonly used are having a relook. As they contain highly sensitive data, business-critical systems for controlling employee lifecycles, monitoring buying orders, or performing other functions come with inherent risk. It remains a major challenge for organizations to obtain such applications to ensure access is allowed for only the right people. Organizations using legacy identity and access management (IAM) systems such as PeopleSoft ERP have recently grappled with an increasing number of hacking and phishing problems.

With most of the workers now working from home, the ways in which PeopleSoft is accessed are evolving, and the ways in which it is secured must also be updated to meet the changing demands. Companies are trying to find out how best to fix this crucial issue, with budget restrictions and a limited number of IAM providers dealing with urgent remote access and enhanced security requirements.

New Realities Spur Unique Demands

A strategic step towards improving the user experience is to make transactions mobile-friendly in PeopleSoft applications. Online access to self-service modules such as benefits registration, time entry, approvals, and self-service for students is also encouraged by organizations so that users can complete tasks both on their own time and on their own devices. Despite the benefits of mobilizing and facilitating remote access, the safety implications of PeopleSoft remain crucial. Expanding access to confidential data outside the protected perimeter of the corporate network raises the likelihood of threats and additional breaches that will succeed in their goal. While hackers are increasingly targeting individual users and devices to their advantage using the human-error factor, the increase in user-centered threats is also contributing to the risk.

The Security Implications

Eighty-one percent of cyberattacks have included stolen credentials, a recent study revealed. It is important to consider a security platform that assists PeopleSoft customers in taking a consistent approach to security. This skill helps businesses mitigate the risk of unauthorized entry.

As companies expand access to apps outside their firewall, login credential hackers focus on ease of access and target users. Offering a single layer of authentication is grossly insufficient in today’s data security environment.

With most customers of PeopleSoft ERP recently reporting a hack, it has become clear that identity authentication and access control are significant challenges. To defend these systems from the various internal and external threats that seek to bypass them, organizations need to greatly strengthen their Identity and Access Management controls. With PeopleSoft, an efficient solution can easily incorporate existing multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions, thus enabling contextual compliance. MFA’s context-aware implementation balances PeopleSoft security with risk and provides an additional layer of authentication.

The implementation of multi-factor authentication for PeopleSoft is suggested. However, integrating security solutions for PeopleSoft and MFA is not easy. In the absence of integration and compliance tasks, deployment rules are overly restrictive and cause user pushback. To better balance the implementation of multi-factor authentication with some degree of access risk, integration is advised.

In general, an advanced persistent threat (APT) refers to a prolonged and targeted cyber assault in which attackers gain access to a corporate network for an extended period and remain undetected. Because of their high-value data, APT attacks are typically aimed at organizations in sectors such as national security, manufacturing, and the financial industry. As they secretly take control of the data of your organization, these cybercriminals work hard to remain undetected. Let’s look at how you can detect APT if you have one and the steps to tackle it.

While your organization may not be of the type that attracts the attention of well-funded and well-organized hacker groups or rogue nation-states, you need to remember that instead of causing network harm, the intruder’s primary objective is to steal data. That means an APT can be launched by a malicious outsider or an insider. The last thing these hackers want is for you to discover their presence and kick them out.

Signs of an Advanced Persistent Threat

While it is difficult to identify one, in the case of an advanced persistent threat, you will begin to find subtle changes that indicate something happening out of the ordinary. In the ERP system, let’s take a look at some spooky behavior that may indicate the presence of an APT.

Payroll fraud is the most common consequence of an APT

The payroll department might notice anomalies: multiple direct deposits are wired to the same account; employees who have opted for paper paychecks instead of direct deposit reports are no longer getting their mail. Or, during a routine security audit, you can find the sudden development of high-privileged user accounts, but the logs display no entries that indicate who requested or approved them.

Context of access could be a sign of an APT

In your ERP system, there are other signs of irregular behavior, such as frequent after-hours account activity, excessive login mistakes and suspicious access, and obscure IP addresses from overseas locations. Regardless of the signs, the next step is to launch an investigation. The advanced persistent threat counts on your inactivity to stay concealed.

Stave-off APTs with a multi-layered security strategy

When abnormal behavior reveals itself, companies using legacy ERP systems are frequently left in the dark. The granular visibility required to identify and remove malicious actors in data access and use is lacking in such systems.

There are data protection and analytics applications that allow businesses to adopt a layered security strategy that includes complex controls for authentication and authorization, along with real-time monitoring that provides insight into when and by whom data is accessed. These solutions add these extra layers of security into your ERP system to help ensure the data is still safe even if it is haunted by an APT (e.g., valid login credentials stolen by a phishing attack).

The US Department of Homeland Security has, in the past, alerted companies about the increasing threat of attacks against enterprise resource planning systems. The alert came in the aftermath of a study exposing the widespread violations in Oracle and SAP systems. While government agencies and some other sectors are particularly vulnerable to security outbreaks, it is more common for smaller companies and producers to become victims of breaches.

As disturbing as this news is, it should not stop enterprises from looking for ERP solutions. Without introducing ERP to simplify workflows and act as a central hub of business data, organizations will fall behind in our fast-paced marketplace. The reality is that our data has never been 100% safe, and cyber-attack vulnerabilities sometimes stem more from weak protocols than from the systems themselves. The risk of getting hacked decreases significantly with each security precaution a company takes. In this section, we discuss the steps companies can take to ensure robust ERP data security.

Regular Upgrades And Updates

The news of rising ERP attacks proves the need to update and upgrade your apps periodically. There have been obsolete, unpatched cases of a significant number of hacked systems. Upgrades and patches are frequently postponed by organizations as long as possible because they do not want to delegate their money to the process. Most new updates, however, contain fixes and safety characteristics designed to overcome security challenges. There are constant new threats, and the program needs to keep on top of the changes. The longer you stick to your legacy structure, the more it will be vulnerable to attack.

Training For Employees And SoD

The greatest danger to the credibility of the data is sometimes not the program itself; it's the people who use it. Your business becomes a prime target for hackers when users do not hand over information properly. That's why, during ERP deployments, you should not only train users but maintain an ongoing training schedule. This encourages users to reacquaint themselves with security procedures so that they can report anomalies by opening compromised email attachments to avoid introducing problems.

Another way to ensure the data is handled properly by your users is to segregate duties. Segregation of Duties (SoD) requires the dispersion of tasks among many individuals. In this way, one person is not entirely responsible for the maintenance of sensitive data and the implementation of essential procedures. Logins can be tracked by managers, and misuse, if any, detected.

Database Maintenance

A goldmine for hackers is the ERP database. To ensure robust ERP data security, companies need to put in place different steps. One measure is encryption, which, by converting data into a code that is meaningless to hackers, serves as one of the most efficient ways of protecting information. Businesses should run checks to detect possible vulnerabilities in addition to encryption.

But hackers don't only target a database directly; they also use backdoor methods to access confidential company data. In order to provide optimum security, IT workers must stay vigilant on all fronts, secure firewalls, upgrade passwords, and enforce two-step verification methods. Since it is such a heavy burden to maintain security standards, organizations should employ the assistance of specialist experts to direct them through this phase to ensure that there is no opening for attack.

Conclusion

With 2020 nearly three months behind us and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines picking up speed, organizations are looking hopefully to 2021 and beyond. Optimism aside, a hard truth about 2021 is that remote work and ERP access are here to stay. Organizations must put a mission-critical emphasis on ERP data privacy, security, and access governance policies. Here are some key strategies to consider as you strive to improve your ERP data privacy and compliance in 2021 and beyond.

ERP Data Privacy Starts with Knowing Your Data

The obvious first step to any kind of ERP data privacy is knowing exactly what data you have. Think of it this way: you can’t protect what you don’t know. This data inventory, if you will, should align with the basic data privacy guidelines set out by regulations like GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and a growing number of others. Companies should have an understanding of what sort of personal data is collected, how that data is accessed, where and how it is stored, what is it used for, if it is shared with another organization or group, and how long is it kept before being disposed of.

Apply Dynamic Access Governance Policies for ERP Data Access

Now that you’ve identified and categorized your data, it’s time to establish who has access to it, when they can access it, from where, on what device, and how often. The problem is that legacy ERP applications like SAP (ECC and S/4HANA), Oracle PeopleSoft, and Oracle EBS use static role-based access controls (RBAC) to govern access. These roles have reached their limitations in a dynamic workplace because static roles do not leverage contextual attributes.

To create a more dynamic and robust cybersecurity and data privacy program, you can enable dynamic access controls (often called ABAC) to support your RBAC controls by incorporating additional contexts, such as geolocation, time of day, and transaction type. Combining ABAC and RBAC, you can establish rules that grant access to ERP applications and transactions only if the person meets certain contextual criteria. When defining risk through the lens of the context of a user’s access, dynamically enforcing governance is a crucial data privacy objective and investment.

Leverage Dynamic Controls to Enforce Policies

Once dynamic governance policies are in place, organizations can enforce those policies by leveraging dynamic technology. Specifically, here’s how Appsian can help you gain control and visibility of data access and usage without sacrificing productivity.

Avoid Unnecessary Data Exposure with Dynamic Data Masking An essential requirement of data privacy is ensuring that users accessing ERP applications, either in an authorized or unauthorized manner, do not have needless access to valuable data through various pages, reports, or queries. Appsian can reduce the exposure of sensitive data with dynamic data masking for sensitive fields. You can also leverage click-to-view functionality to protect against unnecessary exposure while logging intentional access to sensitive information.

Add Stepped-Up Multi-Factor Authentication at the Transaction Level Adding multi-factor authentication at the transaction level, as well as at the perimeter, ensures that users are not only authorized to access and view the data but perform the actual transaction based on their current context of access. This should be applied to highly sensitive transactions like editing a direct deposit account number, accessing compensation data, or running a report containing employee PII.

Strengthen Data Loss Prevention Data exfiltration, whether malicious or accidental, typically originates from employees’ legitimate access to ERP applications and can be hard to prevent or detect with existing security capabilities. Using context-aware data loss prevention policies, Appsian can prevent users from executing transactions that download ERP data in high-risk scenarios, such as: after business hours, from untrusted locations, networks, or devices.

Enhance Visibility into ERP Data Access and Usage

Compliance mandates such as GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and others require organizations to maintain data access and usage details. Unfortunately, user behavior can be a mystery when relying on native ERP logging features to understand the “what, who, where, why, and how” around data access and usage. It’s a manual, time-consuming task. But not anymore.

Appsian360 provides granular, real-time visibility into user activity logging and analytics, delivering actionable insights to automate compliance audits. It allows organizations to continuously monitor data access and usage and proactively alerts security teams to anomalous activity, allowing them to quickly respond with full forensic information.

See for Yourself How Appsian Can Help Improve Your ERP Data Privacy & Compliance

Organizations around the world have enabled their workers to function remotely in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees are accessing data setups that are somewhat different from that of the office. Under such conditions, maintaining ERP data security for organizations has become a major challenge. The context of access becomes highly relevant in this case. 'Context' means the time of day, location, device type, URL, etc. When it comes to detecting unusual activity that might otherwise have gone unnoticed in the "always linked" world of today, contextual variables are the primary drivers. Moreover, as it is meant to be ubiquitous to navigate business systems.

The Expanded Scope of Access

While mobile ERP access means added versatility, with this flexibility comes a higher risk of exposure. It is necessary to note that the ever-changing context of access is where the risk of unintended data disclosure inevitably resides.

Several forms can be taken by the context of access. For instance, access from an unknown network to office applications, access from a foreign country while on a business trip, and the like. In a mobile world, the background of access changes every moment, creating a significant risk. It would be right to think that your highly privileged users do not want to view sensitive company data from areas where their session could be compromised.

Unfortunately, since ERP functions and permissions are static, traditional ERP systems are not designed to deal with the variable danger. This implies that if you are a high-privilege user in your workplace, you are still a high-privileged user outside the office everywhere!

The Threat of Data Leakage in Mobile Environments

Even the most well-meaning workers will accidentally leak data. For instance, mobile access requires the use of personal devices for work, which is unavoidable. Many mobile devices are shared and have automatic backup systems between members of the family. In a cloud backup, sensitive information accessed from a personal computer may be used without the employee ever understanding it. Now, the data resides in personal storage and is forever entirely beyond the company's control.

The Relevance of Contextual Access Controls

Many assume that network-centered data hazards are the most prominent, and that assertion is not wrong. The most huge, most headline-grabbing data breaches, where millions of records have been compromised, have typically been large-scale incidents. Organizations also implemented sophisticated firewalls and network access controls to keep themselves out of the press. But data threats are becoming increasingly 'user-centric,' phishing/spear-phishing being the most prevalent.

For users who work outside the office, phishing/spear-phishing has proven to be extremely successful: reviewing emails quickly during offsite meetings, working from home late at night or early morning, or any other situation in which a user's environment provides just enough distraction to fall for a phishing email.

Shouldn't organizations implement controls that dynamically enforce policies when risk is deemed high, given that mobile access increases risk multiples? After all, your internet browser alerts you when you visit a website that isn't secure. The inclusion of contextual controls helps businesses to align their business activities with their security policies.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, enterprise resource planning (ERP) programs are a must for today's enterprises because of their various advantages. But it is important to know the downsides of the software to ensure that to go for ERP is the best step for your company. The key ERP disadvantages that clients can face are as follows:

1: Mandatory Compliance Obligations And Data Security

According to available evidence, there has been a major upsurge in instances of data breaches globally in the recent past. Hackers were successful in intruding into corporate networks, causing losses in millions. There are also several laws that explicitly seek to protect the privacy of data. SOX, GDPR, CCPA, PCI-DSS are just a few of them. ERP data security, therefore, is very important.

In today's digital world, data protection and data privacy are a must. There are several vulnerabilities in ERP systems that reveal company data, posing threats to initiatives for data protection. Luckily enough, with their comprehensive systems that provide granular visibility and control over the data access and use actions of users, there are data protection solutions on the market that can give you complete peace of mind.

2: The Cost

If you want to invest in a traditional ERP scheme, you might theoretically end up spending five figures on a single license. For many, that's by far the biggest drawback of ERP applications. The software's upfront costs alone, particularly for small to medium-sized companies, can be prohibitively high. SMBs can minimize the upfront costs by opting for a cloud service, which is typically charged monthly.

3: Costs Involving Implementation and Maintenance

The personnel costs and the time required for successful implementation must be taken into account by companies. You can need to hire additional staff from IT, ERP consultants, software training experts, etc. In addition to the license fee, vendors selling traditional systems typically levy a maintenance charge. Besides, to better support your ERP applications, you will need to invest in new hardware such as servers and compatible mobile devices. And again, in order to retain them, you would need to nominate individuals.

With a generally painless implementation, no hardware, and a limited need for upgrades or enhancements, the Cloud ERP platform again represents a successful alternative. Technology built on the cloud is designed to be undemanding. Otherwise classified as SaaS, it is (Software-as-a-Service). Implementing these systems requires logging into any compatible and internet-enabled device; maintenance and upgrades are typically carried out by the vendor.

4: The Customization Process

There are particular needs of different organizations. Customization is one of the best adaptive features of ERP apps, but it can get out of hand quickly and rapidly. Customization of your applications takes a lot of time, effort, expertise, and money. But too many businesses completely underestimate how many resources are needed and either do not complete their customizations or end up going way over budget.

5: Complexity

There are different features of ERP security systems, but that also means that the platform can be complicated and complex. Companies are not unaware of being swept up in all the excitement of an ERP solution, but they do not prepare adequately for its implementation. Many organizations can find themselves too large and complex with processes for their activities, resulting in low ROI. This is especially true if, because of the complexity of executing the program, you do not convince your team.

Conclusion

ERP data, being a treasure trove of vital enterprise information, truly reflects your business. All relevant information related to an organization is included in the ERP framework. Considering this, your ERP data security strategy must be at least as perfect as your security strategy for your other business verticals. Here are some ways to build a robust security strategy for ERP data.

1. User-Access Definition And Regular Audit

Every ERP consumer should have role-based access defined for all datasets. It is also important to divide such access into at least three categories: read-only, export-permitted, and full access, including editing.

Ensure that users log into the ERP with secure user identifiers and strong passwords at the basic level. You need new passwords irregularly and often. ERP data security can also be maintained with the help of routine data audits. Audit user accounts to verify their job duties and to ascertain the need for access to the data they are already allowed to use. If a user's access needs to change because they have taken a new position, modify access to ERP data based on the current role. As these might no longer be necessary, do not just build on their current levels of access.

2. The Old-Fashioned Security Methods Still Work

Simple manual controls such as division of duties have functioned for hundreds of years and still operate today. At least one person not directly involved in the transaction should authorize transactions (financial and data transactions). Serially numbered purchase orders and sales orders are another regular security control method employed. Where possible, define formats for ERP data, including social security numbers, check numbers and part numbers. Data that do not match the required format can be rejected from processing.

3. Data Usage And Transactions Monitoring

When searching for anomalies, create queries to track the use of ERP data. Start by looking for simple targets, such as users who approve their own payments. Start looking, then, for patterns. It could be a sign that if an ERP consumer's transaction volume increases or decreases in an unusual manner, trouble is brewing.

4. Monitor And Protect External Transactions

For external transactions, ERP data security is even more of a challenge. Both cloud transmissions and even those connected to in-house systems are included. Your connections should always be secure, and your safety should be checked periodically. Consider encrypting the flow of data that is beyond your control. You can also monitor the type of devices that are connected to your ERP system. Do these devices comply with your firm's BYOD guidelines? To get an idea, it's time for a quick search.

Conclusion