„Trust Matters – SAP Cloud Platform Security“

SAP Cloud Platform is an essential part of SAP’s digital strategy. It is the proven platform as a service that enables customers to rapidly develop new applications or extend existing ones, all in the cloud.

Out there in the marketplace, one can find an ever-increasing number of cloud offerings. And, from experience we know: people do business with partners they can trust. So, what are the criteria that are actually top of mind for you when moving your business into the cloud?

With frequent reports of security breaches and hacking of corporate data systems, we at SAP firmly believe that security of company data and software systems has become a competitive differentiator.

SAP has a long tradition in building reliable and secure software. Being a world market leader in business software, SAP is totally aware of its responsibility and customers’ expectations relating to security. Consequently, we combine a multitude of diligently designed, planned, and implemented measures to provide you as a customer with a cloud solution that has one of the highest levels of security in the industry.

At SAPPHIRE NOW 2017, we are pleased to announce the latest enhancements regarding security in SAP Cloud Platform. They can be grouped into new generic security capabilities of the platform as well as into new functionalities in SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication and in SAP Cloud Platform Identity Provisioning.

SAP Cloud Platform Security

SAP Cloud Platform already offers a variety of security capabilities that allow

• Re-use of functions and features for secure development of applications and secure runtime environment
• Functions to efficiently set up and manage server-side security capabilities.

We now add configurable identity providers for SAP Cloud Platform administration. With this, customers can use their own SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication tenant for managing Cloud Platform administrators and developers (platform users) instead of using SAP ID service. This enables customers to use advanced security features, such as configurable password policy and a strong Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA). Additionally, we have added groups management to the Authorization Platform API as well as additional platform APIs for trust management and OAuth Client Management.

Another innovation covers the area of customizable SAP Cloud Platform Roles for platform users. With this, we offer more flexibility to adjust SAP Cloud Platform administration permissions to organizational requirements.

SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication

With SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication, you can provide your employees, customers and partners with simple and secure cloud-based access to the business processes, applications, and data they need.

Featuring state-of-the art authentication mechanisms, secure single sign-on functionality, on-premise integration, and convenient self-service options, SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication simplifies user experience in the cloud.

It is based on the open industry standards SAML 2.0 and SCIM. To provide additional integration options with existing on-premise authentication solutions, we will add support for X.509 certificates-based authentication. This is complemented with custom password policies and extended user management capabilities as well as an integration to Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

SAP Cloud Platform Identity Provisioning

The main goal of SAP Cloud Platform Identity Provisioning is to provide an end-to-end identity lifecycle for all business scenarios in the cloud. Identity Provisioning helps customers simplify the onboarding of users and reduces the time-to-value for business applications in the cloud, by automatically creating the required user accounts with the right privileges. At the same time the service ensures that customers keep control over their identity lifecycle, thereby preventing compliance risks.

With the next releases the service will offer integration with SAP Identity Management and additional SAP solutions, as well as integration with non-SAP solutions that are relevant for our customers.

There is always a time for security, and it is always now

SAP Cloud Platform is the platform for your transformation journey toward digital business models. And a true platform approach relies on secure integration. Consequently, our security enhancements in the platform aim on supporting you as you entrust your business to SAP.

Because your trust in the security of SAP Cloud Platform remains the ultimate currency for us.

You will find a brand new security whitepaper for SAP Cloud Platform here.