February 24, 2016 - Ponemon Institute today released the results of the industry's first research survey on SAP cybersecurity, sponsored by Onapsis, demonstrating that more than half of companies surveyed, 56 percent, believe it is likely their company would have a data breach due to insecure SAP applications. This same group indicates their company's SAP platform has been breached an average of two times in the past 24 months, yet 63 percent indicate C-level executives tend to underestimate the risks associated with insecure SAP applications, the systems that run the most critical business operations and data for Global 2000 organizations.

"One of the big surprises in this study is this swell of silent breaches that are increasingly hitting organizations which are difficult to detect, and materially impact businesses and the overall economy," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. "Worryingly, while survey data indicates SAP breaches are expected to increase, there is no single group or job function most accountable. It appears that SAP cybersecurity is falling through the cracks between the SAP security teams and InfoSec teams, who need to step up to bridge the gap and make it a priority."

The survey data indicates that senior leadership values the importance of SAP to the bottom line but ignores its cybersecurity risks: Seventy-six percent of respondents say their senior leadership understands the importance and criticality of SAP installations to profitability. However, only 21 percent of respondents say their leaders recognize SAP cybersecurity risks.

With over 600 qualified respondents, the research titled "Uncovering the Risks of SAP Cyber Breaches" is the first significant study of both IT and InfoSec professionals tasked with protecting the SAP systems that house their organization's crown jewels.

"While the industry is starting to understand the impact facing the value of the data that could be lost from their SAP system due to a data breach or a cyberattack, the attack surface is increasing rapidly with new technologies like IoT, mobile and cloud," said Mariano Nunez, CEO of Onapsis. "Clear delineation of responsibility and the use of third party tools to integrate teams, establish processes and operationalize the prevention and detection of SAP vulnerabilities is becoming a priority to avoid significant economic impacts."

Other key takeaways include:

• Are SAP platforms likely to contain malware? Seventy-five percent of respondents say it is very likely (33 percent) or likely (42 percent) SAP platforms have one or more malware infections.
• How long would it take to detect a breach? There is little confidence a breach involving the SAP platform would be detected immediately or within one week. In fact nearly 100 percent of participants believed they could not detect an SAP breach immediately. Even a year later, 78 percent of respondents believed they could not detect an SAP breach.
• Who is responsible for SAP security? Respondents believe it is the responsibility of SAP, not their company, to ensure the security of its applications and platform, according to 54 percent of respondents. Internally, the SAP security team is seldom accountable for the security of SAP systems: Twenty-five percent of respondents say no one function is most accountable for SAP security in their organizations followed by IT infrastructure (21 percent), SAP security team (19 percent), and information security (18 percent).
• Who would be blamed if a data breach involving the SAP system occurred? Thirty percent of respondents say no one is most accountable if their organization had a SAP breach followed by the CIO (26 percent of respondents) and the CISO (18 percent of respondents).
• What is the impact of IoT and other new technologies? Fifty-nine percent of respondents believe new technologies and trends such as cloud, mobile, big data and the Internet of Things increases the attack surface of their SAP applications.

What can organizations do to improve their SAP cybersecurity posture? Seventy-three percent of respondents say knowledge about the latest threats and vulnerabilities affecting SAP applications improves their organization's ability to manage cybersecurity risks. Certain practices are also very important to achieving security in the SAP infrastructure:

Eighty-three percent of respondents say it is very important to be able to detect zero-day vulnerabilities in SAP applications

Eighty-one percent say the ability to prioritize threats against SAP applications based on when the attack is likely to succeed

Eighty-one percent say it is very important to have continuous monitoring in order to ensure SAP applications are safe and secure.