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SAP GRC Access Control Solution.-White paper on Implementation Methodology.
HCL SAP GRC PracticeJanuary 2008
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Table of ContentExecutive Summary 3
Introduction 4
SOX, SoD and SAP 4
Functions of SAP GRC Access Control 6
Implementation Methodology 7
ANNEXURE 1: Various Aspects 10
ANNEXURE 2: Role and Responsibilities 11
ANNEXURE 3: Time Lines 12
ANNEXURE 4: Challenges 12
ANNEXURE 5: SAP GRC Business benefits 13
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In the era of stringent corporate governance new regulatory requirements have made tighter internal control as
standard compliance across the globe.
All organization irrespective of size are struggling to comply with these regulations and managing the risk. The cost and
effort to establish, maintain and prove compliance demand both money and time which can be invested for more value
addition rather than value protection.
For many organization the technology solutions is to try automation using standard office tools such as spreadsheet
which in spite of its low cost advantage may become a part of problem rather than a compliance solution.
Fortunately newly available software platform that have become known as the GRC technology can help streamline the
automation. This white paper pertains to one of the most accountable control automation tool: SAP Access Control and
details its implementation methodology.
Executive Summary
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He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.
That is the nature of living creatures.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
©Barings Bank – Nick Lee son’s $1.2 Billion loss –
Barings’ forced into bankruptcy.
§Due to improper supervision and SoD
violations delayed detection.
©Daiwa Bank – Toshihide Iguchi’s $1.1 Billion loss
and $340 Million fine for unauthorized trades.
©Mgmt tried to conceal losses by overriding
controls and SoD violations
©Sumitomo Bank – Yasuo Hamanaka’s $1.8
Billion copper position losses.
©Maintained 2 sets of books for over a decade
©NatWest U.K. – Kyriacos Papoulis concealed
over $100 Million in option losses
§Manipulated the books.
©Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine
Systems and WorldCom…………………..Socite
General….
SAP GRC Access Control
Integrated GRC is an offshoot of SOX and such other
compliances existing across industries worldwide.
Evolution of Integrated GRC:
In itself GRC is not new. Corporate Governance, Risk
management and Compliance as individual issues where
the most fundamental concerns of Business and its Top
leaders. What's new is Integrated GRC.
It an approach the organization practices and the various
roles the board and the senior management, line
management and rest of the organization play in relation
to oversight, strategy risk management and strategy
execution regarding compliance with laws and
regulations and internal policies and procedures.
IntroductionSarbanes Oxley Compliance was a result of such
Scandals. Also known as the Public Company Accounting
Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and
commonly called SOX, it is a controversial United States
federal law passed in response to a number of major
corporate and accounting scandals.
Signed by Congress on July 30, 2002 its overall purpose is
to protect investors by improving the accuracy and
reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the
securities laws.
As per the requirement to be SOX (Sarbanes Oxley Act)
compliant, the main issue arises in SoD (Segregation of
Duties) management i.e. Access related problems in
organizations. For this purpose the necessity is to make
an automated approach to implement the rules and
policies of SOX compliance.
SAP is in process of addressing the various compliance
and risk management issues across the verticals with the
development of automated solutions.
One of the Solutions they have developed comprises
GRC Access Control an application that handles
sustainable prevention of segregation of duties
violations. By implementing the automated Access
control solution, it will provide the enablement to fulfill
the requirements of SOX compliance without any SoD
violation and its severity.
SOX, SoD and SAP
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A primary internal control intended to prevent or
decrease the risk of errors or irregularities by assigning
conflicting duties to different personnel.
SAP Definition for SoD
Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Across an enterprise there are various functions and
these functions are performed, together by a set of
roles/responsibilities.
SoD says that these set of Roles/responsibilities should
be assigned in such a way that, across an enterprise, any
individual should not have end to end access rights over
any function.
End to end access SoD
Actual job titles and organizational structure may vary
greatly from one organization to another, depending on
the size and nature of the business. With the concept of
SoD, business critical duties can be categorized into four
types of functions: authorization, custody, record keeping
and reconciliation. In a perfect system, no one person
should handle more than one type of functions.
The Roles and Responsibilities for the function should
be divided in such a way that one person does not have
full right over the function that the risk of malicious
activity of manipulation of the function is reduced. The
more critical the function is, greater and clearer
Segregation of Duties should be.
Some examples of incompatible duties are:
©Creating vendor and initiate payment to him.
©Creating invoices and modifying them.
©Processing inventory, and posting payment.
©Receiving Checks and writing pay-offs.
Ideally, single individual must not have authority of
creation, modification, reviewing and deletion for any
transaction / tasks / resources.
If any individual has access rights to creation and
modification, he can create and after getting it reviewed,
he can modify it to do some fraudulent exercises.
Similarly if an individual has creation and deletion rights
he can create, initiate payment and later delete any
transaction logs that can track his activity.
Segregation of Duties deals with access controls. Access
Control ensures that one individual should not have
access to two or more than two incompatible duties.
Segregation of Duties ensures that:
©There are no errors, as SoD ensures cross check of
roles/responsibilities
©Risk of Fraud is reduced as fraud will involve two or
more than two individuals
©Clear separation of Roles/Responsibilities across
various functions in organization.
©Segregation of Duties must be so performed that it
reduces the risk associated with a function/process
that can be mal-functioned to practice any
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fraudulent exercises. If proper SoD does not exist in
an organization, then:
©There are ineffective internal access controls
©There is improper use of materials, money, financial
assets and resources
©Estimation of financial condition may be wrong
©Financial documents produced for audits and review
may be incorrect
Manual Approach for SoD
Traditional approaches for identifying and preventing
SoD issues are costly, time-consuming, and exhaustive
with scope for errors. In the increased regulatory
environment, companies cannot afford to waste time
and money hoping that a manual approach will satisfy
their audit requirements. Companies now seek a
comprehensive, automated approach to help them
quickly resolve the SoD challenges without disrupting
their business.
SAP Access Control
SAP GRC Access Control delivers a comprehensive,
cross-enterprise set of Access Control that enables all
corporate compliance stakeholders -- including business
managers, auditors, and IT security managers -- to
collaboratively define and oversee proper SoD
enforcement, enterprise role management, compliant
provisioning, and Superuser privilege management.
Functions of SAP GRC Access Control
application for SAP. When deployed together,they
provide an end-to-end Access Control solution that
addresses the following areas:
©Risk detection SAP applications for Access Control
detect even the most obscure access and
authorization risks across SAP and non-SAP
applications, providing protection against every
potential source of risk, including segregation of
duties and transaction monitoring.
©Risk remediation and mitigation These applications
for access and authorization control enable fast,
efficient remediation and mitigation of access and
authorization risks by automating workflows and
enabling collaboration among business and technical
users.
©Reporting The appl icat ions del iver the
comprehensive reports and role-based dashboards
businesses need to monitor the performance of
compliance initiatives and to take action as needed.
©Risk prevention Once access and authorization risks
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The SAP GRC Access Control Includes the Virsa
Compliance Calibrator application for SAP, the Virsa
Role Expert application for SAP, the Virsa Firefighter
application for SAP, and the Virsa Access Enforcer
have been remediate, only SAP applications for
Access Control can prevent new risks from entering
a production system. By empowering business users
to check for risks in real time and automating user
administration, the applications make risk
prevention a continuous, proactive process.
Implementation Methodology based on SAP Best Practice
HCL has come out with an excellent approach and
methodology for implementation of SAP GRC Access
Control Suite. This Suite embraces four tools:
©Access risk analysis and remediation
©Complaint user provisioning
©Role Management
©Privileged user access management
This implementation methodology when followed step
by step makes access and authorization risk
management and further its compliance adherence, an
integral part of customary organizational activities. The
implementation process is based on Best Practices
provided by SAP and extends from GET CLEAN
(identify and resolve the access risk issues) phase to
STAY CLEAN (complaint user provisioning process is
channeled into automated structure) phase.
The implementation process starts from installation and
configuration of Compliance Calibrator. In line with the
SoD Management Process, Business Process Owners
identify any fraudulent or accidental corruption activity,
subjected to access and authorization or SoD risks and
then implement the necessary mitigation controls on
them. Next, during implementation of Role Expert,
through Role Designer we design the role designation
methodology of the organization. In Access Enforcer
implementation, we define workflows. Workflows are
meant for channelizing the different work processes into
structured, transparent and automated manner.
At last, Fire Fighter is implemented which endow
selected users with exceptional rights. To ensure risk
occurrence, all the activities of users with fire fighter
rights are logged and documented.
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The proposed methodology which helps in
implementing SAP GRC Access Control projects has six
phases:
©Implementation Readiness
©Deploy & Install GRC Access Control Tool Suite
©Risk Analysis and Remediation
©Super User Privilege Management
©Compliance User Provisioning
©Enterprise Role Management
Control Tools.
Access Control Tool Suite can be easily downloaded
from SAP Support Portal at SAP Service Marketplace at:
service.sap.com. You need to login from your service
marketplace ID. It will ask for your Customer Number
or Installation Number.
The SAP GRC Access Control Tool Suite includes
following tools:
©Virsa Compliance Calibrator
©Virsa Access Enforcer
©Virsa Role Expert
©Virsa Firefighter for SAP
Risk analysis and remediation
Risk Analysis and Remediation is done by
Compliance Calibrator.
Risk Analysis and Remediation provides real-time
compliance around the clock and prevents security and
controls violations before they occur. Once deployed,
business managers can analyze real-time data, find
hidden issues and help ensure the effectiveness of access
and authorization controls across the enterprise.
The scope of the process includes following key
areas:
©Identification of critical access and segregation of
duties
©Real-time risk assessment
©Simulation and remediation
©Documentation of mitigation controls
©Summary and drill-down reports
Preparation of Implementation
We recommend the implementation life-cycle of GRC
Access Control Tool includes every thing from
Installation and configuration of all 4 software’s to their
integration and validation.
Preparation Includes:
©Net Weaver installation configured and validated i.e.
ready for applications installation
©Resource Identification
©Requirement Validation: It will include review and
validation of customer’s requirement against
product functionality. There should be a brief analysis
of customer’s business environment which will
include the organizational scan and study of their
business processes. BPX along with implementation
consultant and BPO will architect solutions to
address requirement gaps.
Deploy & Install GRC Access Control Tool
Suite
Once the preparations for implementation are done, we
proceed for installation and configuration of Access
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Super user Privilege Management
Superuser Privilege Management is done
using Firefighter
©Superuser Privilege Management is a solution used
for emergency situations, extensive and/or special
access, and when you do not have time to obtain
logins, passwords. Feature provided by it:
©Provides Super User access control
©Compliant controls for emergency access
§Users assigned to specific firefighting IDs with
defined authorizations and validity dates
§Separate login is required as well as
documentation regarding reason for use
Can only be used by one user at a time
Auditable reporting
Compliant User Provisioning
Compliant User Provisioning will be done
by Access Enforcer
Access Enforcer enables fully compliant user
provisioning throughout the employee life cycle and
prevents new SoD violations. Businesses can automate
provisioning, test for SoD issues, streamline approvals,
and reduce the workload for IT staff. The solution
performs following activities:
©Automate Provisioning Workflow
©Provide Compliant User Provisioning Across the
Enterprise
§
©
§Logs actions without turning on SAP logging
©Identify SoD Issues in Real Time
©Streamline Approvals
Enterprise Role Management
Introduction to Role Expert
Role Expert is a Role Creation and Management Tool.
This SAP GRC Access Control Tool is a web enabled tool
that can ease the overhead in an Organization in
creation and management of Roles.
Apart from creation and management of Roles it also
takes care of Risks associated with different Roles,
Segregation of Duties, and Generation of types of
reports useful for management and auditors and also the
mitigation of risks.
Purpose of Role Expert
Role Expert implementation serves the following
purposes in an organization:
©It helps implement best practices of good role
naming conventions.
©Automates the creation and maintenance of Roles.
©Implements best practices of Approval workflow
automation for Role in the Organization.
©Automates the generation of reports of various
types to serve the purpose of management and
auditors as well.
©Performing automatic risk analysis at all levels and
also mitigation of risks before approving or creating
the requested role.
©Transparency, tracking and monitoring of creation
and implementation of Roles.
§
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ANNEXURE 1: Various Aspects.
Steps Activities Involved Person Involved Duration/Days
Implementation •Readiness
• Software Installation• NetWeaver Environment Validation
Deploy & Install GRC •Access Control Tool Suite
•••
•
Super User PrivilegeManagement l
• Assignment of Firefighter roles to
• Mapping Firefighter IDs to Owner,
Compliance User •Provisioning
• Define process stages and approvals• Create test initiators, stages, and paths• Define test users and request types• Test initial workflows• Define escalations and detours• Complete workflow configuration
Enterprise Role •Management
• Creation of Role Generation Methodology
• Creation of Naming Conventions for Roles
• Creation of Role in Role Expert• Reports in Role Expert
Hardware/Software requirement Basis/Security 17analysis Consultant
GRC AC Tool Consultant
Software installation as well certain GRC AC Tool Consultant 15one-time initial configuration activities.
Risk Analysis and • Identification of critical access and GRC AC Tool Consultant 26Remediation segregation of duties GRC Business Process Analyst
Real-time risk assessment SOX Domain ConsultantSimulation and remediationDocumentation of mitigation controls Summary and drill-down reports
The application tracks, monitors, and GRC AC Tool Consultant 4ogs every activity a super user GRC Business Process Analystperforms with a privileged user ID.• Creation of Firefighter Ids
applicable User IDs
Firefighter, and Controller
Learn about Access Enforcer GRC AC Tool Consultant 20 workflows and their components GRC Business Process Analyst
Creation of Role Attributes required GRC AC Tool Consultant 15for any Role GRC Business Process Analyst
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Role Number Group Responsibility
Basis/Security Consultant
GRC AC Tool Consultant
• Integration of all 4 tools• Risk Recognition, Remediation, Mitigation• Rule Building and their Maintenance• Configuration of workflows• Configuration of Role Attributes• Configuration of Role Generation Methodology• Configuration of Naming Conventions• Report Generation
SOX Domain 1Consultant • Creation of Mitigation Controls
• Approve or Reject already created Risks and Mitigation
• Scenario Analysis and Identification of Format & Content of
GRC Business 1Process Analyst
• Designing workflows for user and role provisioning• Identification of Role Attributes• Identification of Role Generation Methodology• Identification of Naming Conventions• Identification of risk & role owners and approvers
Client Technical Team
• NetWeaver Environment Validation
Client Business Team
• Approving remediation to address user access issues • Approve or reject risks between business areas and approve
Client Project Manager/ Coordinator
Client Audit / Internal Control Team
1 HCL GRC • Hardware/Software requirement analysis• Software Installation• NetWeaver Environment Validation
2 HCL GRC • Master Data Creation• Configuration of all 4 tools
HCL GRC • Risk identification
Controls
Reports
HCL GRC • Risk Analysis and Validation• Designing alternative controls to mitigate SoD issues
To be Client • Hardware/Software requirement analysisdecided • Software Installation
To be Client • Identifying risk and/or approving controls for monitoring decided risks
mitigating controls for risks.
To be Client • Managing the implementation projectdecided
To be Client • Perform risk assessments on a regular basis to identify new decided risks, perform periodic testing of rules and mitigating
controls; act as a liaison with external auditors.
ANNEXURE 2: Role and Responsibilities
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ANNEXURE 3: Time Lines
Implementation Activity Duration/Days
Formation of project team* 2Software Installation and Validation* 5Requirement Validation/System and User Landscape Study/Master Data Creation*Implementation Readiness 17Compliance Calibrator Configuration and Implementation 26Firefighter Configuration and Implementation 4Role Expert Configuration and Implementation 15Access Enforcer Configuration and Implementation 20Roll-Out/Deployment/Go-Live 10
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Challenges Solution
Real-time alert generation and A
Setting up organizational rules and running risk analysis based on these rules
Integrating workflows in Compliance Calibrator for various processes
Efficient handling of false positives
Designing user-provisioningworkflows and properinitiators to trigger them
Cross-applicationimplementation
Cross-system
Cross-geo implementation
lert Generation and its notification through e-mail was configured notnotification through mail only for mitigating controls but also for risk execution and critical
transaction execution
Compliance Calibrator provides a supplemental table to addressorganizational restrictions without having to change and maintain the entirerules database. These restrictions were configured as organizational rules.
Various processes of Compliance Calibrator can be automated andstructured through workflows which are created and executed throughAccess Enforcer. Path for connecting the Compliance Calibrator to the workflows is entered in the Workflow service URL.
Rule Building is done at authorization objects level to prevent false positivesof SoD violations.
User provisioning workflows are created and configured through AccessEnforcer
The system includes rules at both the transaction and object level that address the SAP applications for APO, Basis, CRM, EBP, SRM, FI/CO, HR /
Payroll, Procure to Pay, MM/QM, Order to Cash, and Portals.
The Virsa Compliance Calibrator "out-of-the-box" rule set includes implementation transaction objects and value combinations analyzing some 120,000 possible
combinations of potential risk for access rights. These cover - SAP: 20,000,Oracle: 20,000, PeopleSoft: 3,800, JDE 151.
A centralized monitoring system is provided by connecting various systemsacross geo.
Note: * These activities are performed simultaneously. The total implementation time is 56 calendar days.
ANNEXURE 4: Challenges
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ANNEXURE: 5
SAP GRC Business Benefits:
SAP helps organizations build an integrated GRC approach in a step-by-step approach. SAP solutions for governance,
risk, and compliance help you leverage your SAP and non-SAP IT investments, and deliver the following business benefits:
Increased shareholder value – Good corporate governance is reflected in many intangibles, including brand and
reputation – and it translates directly into share price premiums.
Optimized risk/return portfolios – Greater transparency and insight enables your decision makers to select or
reject projects based on risk impact and probability relative to potential return.
Reduced GRC costs – Integrated corporate governance significantly reduces the number of people – and time –
required to ensure and manage compliance and risk management.
Improved business performance and predictability – SAP solutions for governance, risk, and compliance deliver
enterprise wide transparency, a systematic process for anticipating risks, and the tools to proactively determine proper
actions.
Business sustainability – Using solutions delivered through automation, analytics, and alerts, businesses can more
effectively mitigate risks stemming from myriads of legislations.
Assumptions for the Duration/Days in Annexure:
1. Minimum Net Weaver support Pack is already installed and validated on identified systems.
2. All the database and memory requirements for installation of Access Control Tools are met.
3. Hardware and memory sizing is already performed.
4. Organization already possesses the license for all required Access Control Tool.
5. Person efforts and time would go on reducing in subsequent implementation in different geographies
6. The company would go for addressing compliance management issues subsequently across different locations.
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