Project Overview
A international company launched a critical initiative to audit SAP access rights and drive role harmonization across multiple business entities. The primary goal was to align access permissions with organizational responsibilities, eliminate compliance gaps, and reduce the risk of internal misuse by addressing Segregation of Duties (SoD) violations and excessive access rights.
The audit uncovered extensive overprovisioning, inconsistent role assignments, and limitations in existing access risk detection tools. To address these issues, they implemented a comprehensive remediation plan developed to tighten governance, strengthen controls, and support audit readiness.
Challenges Identified
However, the audit also revealed several critical governance challenges:
- Excessive Access & Overprovisioning: Many users had access to thousands of SAP transactions (most of which were never used) creating unnecessary risk.
- Inconsistent Role Design: Teams assigned roles without aligning them to actual job responsibilities, leading to functional overlaps and confusion.
- SoD Conflicts: The audit team uncovered multiple Segregation of Duties violations, elevating the risk of fraudulent activity.
- Weak Governance Mechanisms: Internal control teams lacked a process to regularly review and monitor sensitive transactions.
- Cross-Entity Access Issues: Employees had permissions across multiple legal entities, violating confidentiality and data governance policies.
- Tool Gaps: Existing GRC tools missed several high-risk scenarios due to limited configuration and rule coverage.
Approach & Solutions
To resolve these challenges, the team implemented a multi-step approach:
- Built a detailed user-role-transaction matrix to visualize access usage and pinpoint redundant or inactive permissions.
- Performed sensitive transaction audits to uncover gaps in current oversight procedures.
- Facilitated collaborative workshops with cybersecurity, internal controls, and business stakeholders to align on access management priorities.
- Redesigned the SoD framework and control workflows, increasing depth and precision of future audits.
- The team delivered an executive-level risk briefing highlighting critical risks and recommended actions, which led to immediate remediation efforts.
Tools & Methodologies
- SAP ECC: System-level audit and transaction mapping
- SAP GRC Access Control: Risk analysis and simulation
- Microsoft Excel + Power Query: Data modeling and matrix visualization
- Structured Workshops & Interviews: Alignment and change management
- Security Standards Referenced: ISO 27001, NIST Cybersecurity Framework
Impact
As a result of these efforts, the organization achieved several critical outcomes. The initiative:
- Significantly reduced access-related risk exposure
- Improved overall audit readiness
- Established a scalable governance framework for ongoing SAP role and access management
In addition, the project fostered stronger collaboration between technical, cybersecurity, and business teams, laying the groundwork for sustainable access control practices and long-term compliance maturity.
