Strengthening SAP Landscape Security on AWS: Harnessing the Power of AWS Services

As more organizations embrace cloud computing, many are migrating their critical SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products) landscapes to Amazon Web Services (AWS). With this transition, ensuring the security of your SAP environment becomes paramount.

AWS offers a comprehensive suite of security services that can help safeguard your SAP landscape, protecting it from potential threats and vulnerabilities. In this blog, we will try to explore how some of the essential AWS services like Security Groups, Network ACLs (NACLs), AWS Control Tower, Amazon Cognito, AWS Secrets Manager, IAM Identity Center (Previously AWS SSO), AWS Config, AWS Systems Manager (AWS SSM), Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Shield, AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF), AWS Network Firewall, Amazon Inspector, AWS KMS, and Amazon Macie, can work together to enhance the security of your SAP environment on AWS.

• Security Groups and NACLs:

AWS Security Groups and Network ACLs act as the first line of defense for your SAP landscape. Security Groups control inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level, allowing you to define fine-grained rules to permit or deny specific types of traffic. Network ACLs, on the other hand, operate at the subnet level, providing an additional layer of security. By carefully configuring Security Groups and NACLs, you can restrict access to your SAP systems, minimizing the attack surface.

• AWS Control Tower:

AWS Control Tower simplifies the process of setting up a secure multi-account environment on AWS. It helps you establish well-architected and compliant environments for your SAP systems by automating the creation of accounts, implementing security baselines, and continuously monitoring compliance. With Control Tower, you can maintain a standardized security posture across your SAP landscape, reducing the risk of misconfigurations and unauthorized access.

• Amazon Cognito:

Amazon Cognito is a fully managed identity service that enables you to authenticate and authorize users for your SAP applications. It provides a secure user directory and supports various authentication methods, including username/password, social login, and multi-factor authentication (MFA). By integrating Cognito into your SAP landscape, you can ensure that only authorized users have access to your systems and data. (e.g. AWS blog on SAP IDoc Integration with S3 via API Gateway using Amazon Cognito)

• AWS Secrets Manager:

AWS Secrets Manager allows you to securely store and manage secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and passwords used in your SAP applications (e.g. AWS blog on SAP Password Rotation with AWS Secrets Manager). By centralizing the management of secrets, you can eliminate hardcoded credentials and reduce the risk of exposure. Secrets Manager also enables the automatic rotation of secrets, further enhancing security and compliance.

• AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO):

AWS IAM Identity Center, also known as AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), provides centralized user access management for AWS accounts and applications. By integrating AWS SSO with your SAP landscape (e.g. AWS Blog on Integration of AWS SSO with SAP NetWeaver), you can simplify user provisioning and access control. AWS SSO supports integration with popular identity providers, such as Microsoft Active Directory, enabling you to leverage existing user directories and enforce consistent security policies across your SAP systems.

• AWS Config:

AWS Config is a service that helps you assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. By continuously monitoring and recording configuration changes, Config allows you to track the compliance of your SAP environment against desired configurations and security best practices (e.g. AWS blog on Auditing SAP System with AWS Config). It provides valuable insights into resource relationships and helps you quickly identify and respond to security events or anomalies.

• AWS Systems Manager (AWS SSM):

AWS Systems Manager provides a unified interface for managing and securing your SAP instances at scale. It offers features such as patch management, session manager, inventory management, and Run Command (e.g. AWS blog on Automated Start/Stop of SAP HANA Systems with AWS SSM). With Systems Manager, you can automate administrative tasks, apply patches to mitigate vulnerabilities, and maintain consistent configurations across your SAP systems. More details on AWS SSM for SAP can be found at the AWS documentation portal.

• AWS Shield and AWS WAF:

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards your SAP landscape from volumetric, state-exhaustion, and application-layer DDoS attacks. AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) complements Shield by providing protection against common web exploits and vulnerabilities (e.g. AWS blog on Securing SAP Fiori with AWS WAF). By utilizing Shield and WAF, you can fortify your SAP applications and mitigate the risk of service disruption or data breaches.

• AWS Network Firewall:

AWS Network Firewall is a stateful, managed firewall service that filters network traffic at the perimeter of your VPCs. It allows you to define granular rules to control inbound and outbound traffic to your SAP systems, blocking unauthorized access and protecting against network-based attacks. (e.g. AWS blog on Securing SAP with AWS Network Firewall)

• Amazon Inspector:

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps you identify vulnerabilities and potential security issues within your SAP instances. It performs agent-based assessments, analyzing the network, host, and application layers. Inspector provides detailed findings and recommendations to improve the security posture of your SAP landscape.

• AWS Key Management Service (KMS):

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) enables you to create and control the encryption keys used to protect your SAP data. By encrypting data at rest and in transit, you can add an extra layer of security to your SAP systems. KMS integrates seamlessly with various AWS services, allowing you to encrypt data stored in Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon RDS, and more.

• Amazon GuardDuty:

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that uses machine learning to analyze AWS CloudTrail logs, VPC flow logs, and DNS logs for suspicious activity. By continuously monitoring your SAP infrastructure, GuardDuty can detect unauthorized access attempts, compromised instances, and other potential security threats, allowing you to respond quickly and effectively.

• Amazon Macie:

Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and privacy service that uses machine learning to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in your SAP environment, by analyzing the extracted data from SAP. Macie can identify personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, and other sensitive data, helping you enforce data protection policies and meet regulatory compliance requirements. Traditionally Macie would ingest data from S3 but with AWS SDK for SAP ABAP, using API for Amazon Macie can enable native integration of the SAP with the service allowing identification of PII/IP information directly from the application.

Securing your SAP landscape on AWS is of utmost importance to protect your critical business applications and data. By leveraging a combination of AWS services explained above, you can enhance the security posture of your SAP systems. These services provide a comprehensive set of tools to defend against potential threats, ensure compliance, and maintain the integrity of your SAP environment on AWS. And with the advent of AWS SDK for SAP ABAP, integrating core AWS services with SAP has become more intuitive and easier.

More information can be obtained at:

AWS Well-Architected Framework: SAP Lens (Security Pillar)

General SAP on AWS Guide (Security and Reliability for Rise with SAP)