ACCESS CONTROL | AUTHORIZATION MANAGEMENT FOR SAP®
Temporarily disable Central User Management
If RFC function modules are called via RFC connections (for example, from an RFC client program or another system), an authorization check is performed on authorization object S_RFC in the called system. This check checks the name of the function group to which the function module belongs. If this check fails, the system also checks the authorizations for the name of the function module. Configure this check with the auth/rfc_authority_check parameter.
The security audit log is evaluated via the SM20 or SM20N transaction or the RSAU_SELECT_EVENTS report. We recommend using the report as you have more options to personalise the evaluation and to include archived logs of different application servers in the evaluation.
Error analysis for authorizations (part 1)
You can use your own authorization objects to develop permission checks to authorise your custom applications or extend default permissions. So far, the maintenance of the authorization objects has been very unmanageable. Authorization objects can be displayed and recreated in the transaction SU21. Creating authorization objects over this transaction has not been very user-friendly. If the input was not done correctly, the dialogue was sometimes not transparent and confusing for the user. The same was true for storing a authorization object. Several pop-up windows indicate further care activities. Another problem is that the proof of use of the authorization object is limited to finding implementations of the authorization object. However, authorization objects are also used in other places, such as suggestion value maintenance and permission maintenance. Another problem is the use of namespaces. For SAPartner who want to maintain their permission checks in their namespaces, the classic name rooms, starting with J, are used up.
An essential aspect in the risk assessment of a development system is the type of data available there. Normally, at least a 3-system landscape is used (development, test and production system). One of the purposes of this is to ensure that (possibly external) developers do not have access to productive or production-related data. Since developers with the required developer authorizations have access to all data in all clients of the system concerned, there should be no production-related data in a development system. Even a division into a development and a test client (with the sensitive data) within the system does not protect against unauthorized data access for the reasons mentioned above. In the following, it is assumed that no production-related data exists on the development system. Otherwise, extended authorization checks must be carried out in the modules and access to production-related data must be approved beforehand with respect to the production system by the respective data owners. Since developers, as described, have quasi full authorization through their developer rights, revoking the authorizations listed below can raise the inhibition threshold for performing unauthorized activities, but ultimately cannot prevent them.
Secure your go-live additionally with "Shortcut for SAP systems". You can assign necessary SAP authorizations quickly and easily directly in the system.
In addition, you can use the System Recommendations application in the SAP Solution Manager to get a detailed, cross-system overview of the security advice you need.
These include the overarching goal, the legal framework, a naming convention, clarification of responsibilities and process flows for both user and authorization management, and the addition of special authorizations.