How secure your SAP HANA DB is?
To secure SAP HANA DB modern businesses employ a variety of applications such as SAP, etc., to run their business with seamless integrations. These applications contain vast amounts of sensitive business data. Hackers often target databases instead of applications, as many of the enterprises give utmost importance to secure the applications, but not the databases. To prevent possible attacks, comprehensive security processes and configurations are crucial at the database level as well.
There are however differences between database systems when it comes to security. Not all the databases are the same. Some, such as SAP HANA, provide built-in security. Others require you to manage security manually. The purpose of this article is to give you an overview of SAP HANA and its security features. Additionally, you will learn some best practices for securing SAP HANA deployments.
What Is SAP HANA?
It is SAP’s next-generation revolutionary database, built primarily with a column-oriented table structure. Additionally, it uses in-memory storage, storing data in Random Access Memory (RAM). This differs from traditional databases, which tend to use persistent storage like hard drives.
SAP HANA can store and retrieve application data from memory, which functions as a database server. As your data is stored in memory, you can retrieve it much faster than data that is stored on the disk.
With SAP HANA, you can perform a variety of advanced analytics, such as stream analysis, spatial data analysis, and predictive analytics. Additionally, you can use it to transfer data between databases using Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) processes.
SAP HANA runs in a variety of environments, including on-premises and in the cloud. You can run SAP HANA on Azure, AWS, or GCP.
There are however differences between database systems when it comes to security. Not all the databases are the same. Some, such as SAP HANA, provide built-in security. Others require you to manage security manually. The purpose of this article is to give you an overview of SAP HANA and its security features. Additionally, you will learn some best practices for securing SAP HANA deployments.
Risks with SAP HANA database
SAP HANA DB are vulnerable to a variety of risks, including:
- Web applications – Internet access leaves systems more vulnerable due to the requirement for open traffic flow. Since SAP HANA supports integration to third party application, reporting tools, and IDE environments, it is vulnerable to code injection and cross-site scripting attacks. These attacks involve inserting malicious scripts or commands through user input.
- RAM scraping – Viruses or malware run within SAP HANA’s memory are used to infect your systems. Since memory is ephemeral, it is difficult to track these risks. Also, in-memory processes cannot be encrypted since it would degrade performance, so attacks are difficult to stop.
