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NTT DATA Business Solutions | June 7, 2016

Automating SAP Process Controls: Goodbye Manual Controls

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Are you considering automation of controls within your SAP system? If you are running manual controls within SAP Process Controls, then you should be.

Let’s take a look at Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM) and review the features, loopholes, and benefits. This is the first of the three part series blog. In the second part of our blog series, we will examine more of the technical functions of Continuous Controls Monitoring in SAP Process Controls and in our final blog we will discuss NTT DATA Business Solutions’ new product around Continuous Controls Monitoring called “AutomateAccessControls.it” and its benefits and features.

In today’s technical environment, we have the ability to monitor information in a continuous fashion, thereby providing us critical information and direction on how to react to this information. This risk identification and transparency is critical within the SAP environment.

The details of CCM may vary depending on the specific implementation, but the typical setup includes the following features:

  • Configuration monitoring of critical configurations in SAP systems that impacts the risk and controls aspect of the various business processes configured in SAP systems.
  • Monitor whether the configuration exists in its desired state and notifies control owners if there is a change in the configuration of SAP systems thereby determining if this change was done by error or a fraud.
  • Master Data Monitoring of SAP systems, where the SAP solutions for GRC for Process Controls system can monitor changes of master data values that may impact the state of the systems Risk and Controls.
  • SAP HANA has transformed the world of CCM in GRC Process Controls as we can now take the advantage of the in-memory functionalities and enable Transaction Monitoring in SAP systems which was previously cumbersome due to slow performance of the background jobs that brought the data into GRC Process Controls to validate the business rules and alert the control owners appropriately.

Enabling CCM can be a challenge and cumbersome, as the technical details of the configuration consumes a substantial amount of time and energy, resulting in frustration, to say the least.

SAP Process Controls

To overcome this, NTT DATA Business Solutions has built a unique solution around SAP HANA Security called AutomateAccessControls.it. It is a package that delivers preconfigured Automated Controls that can be imported into a GRC system that is activated to use SAP Process Controls. This ready list of Automated Rules also includes the data sources of the system where the controls needs automation.

This solution primarily focuses on the risk ID’s within GRC Access Controls which constitute the “global” ruleset that is provided by SAP out of the box. There are several business process controls that are included in this solution as well.

In the second part of our blog series, we will examine more of the technical functions of Continuous Controls Monitoring in SAP Process Controls and in our final blog we will discuss AutomateAccessControls.it and its benefits and features.

SAP CCM in SAP Process Controls: Customer Case Study Event

Learn how one of our customers is using Continuous Controls Monitoring in GRC Process Controls to reduce their costs and improve security by watching our on-demand video.