Introduction

SAP systems serve as the operational core for global enterprises, processing an astounding $87 trillion in financial transactions annually across more than 230,000 customers worldwide. This foundational role in the global economy makes these systems exceptionally attractive targets for sophisticated cyber adversaries. Yet despite their critical importance, many organizations continue to operate under the dangerous misconception that commercial ERP solutions like SAP are inherently secure “by default.”

The stark reality tells a different story. The average cost of an ERP security breach has surged to over $5.2 million, representing a significant 23% increase from previous years. More alarming still, ransomware incidents specifically targeting compromised SAP systems have increased by 400% since 2021. With 52% of organizations confirming a breach in the past year and 70% experiencing at least one significant cyber attack in 2024, the question is no longer if your SAP environment will be targeted, but when—and whether you’ll be prepared.

The Escalating SAP Security Challenge: Problems Demanding Strategic Solutions

• Challenge 1: Comprehensive Sensitive Data Discovery Across Complex SAP Landscapes
  The Problem: Organizations struggle to identify where sensitive data resides within their vast SAP ecosystems. Research reveals that 31% of organizations lack the necessary tools to identify their riskiest data sources, with an additional 12% uncertain about their capabilities. This visibility gap becomes critical when considering that SAP environments often contain hundreds of database tables with thousands of columns housing personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, and other regulated information.
  
  Mage Data’s Solution: Mage Data’s Sensitive Data Discovery module provides intelligent, AI-powered Discovery specifically designed for SAP environments. The platform supports over 80 out-of-the-box data classifications covering names, social security numbers, addresses, emails, phone numbers, financial records, and health data. For SAP-specific deployments, Sensitive Data Discovery automatically discovers sensitive data across SAP ECC, S/4HANA, and RISE environments, supporting popular SAP databases including HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server. The solution goes beyond basic pattern matching, utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deterministic scoring mechanisms to minimize false positives – achieving a 95% reduction in investigative columns between discovery iterations.
  
  
• Challenge 2: Production Data Exposure in Non-Production Environments
  The Problem: Development, testing, and analytics teams require realistic data to ensure application functionality, yet using production data in these environments creates substantial compliance and security risks. Traditional approaches often result in either unusable synthetic data or dangerous exposure of sensitive information across multiple environments.
  
  Mage Data’s Solution: With Mage’s comprehensive Static Data Masking capabilities addresses this challenge with over 60 anonymization algorithms including Masking, Encryption, and Tokenization. For SAP environments specifically, the platform maintains referential integrity across SAP modules and relational structures while offering context-preserving masking and Format-Preserving Encryption (FPE). The solution supports in-place, in-transit, as-it-happens, and REST API-based anonymization approaches, allowing organizations to choose the optimal method for their SAP architecture. Customer success stories demonstrate the platform’s enterprise scalability—one implementation protected 2.6 terabytes of data across 264 tables with 6,425 columns and over 1.6 billion rows in just 29 hours.
  
  
• Challenge 3: Real-Time Production Data Protection Without Performance Impact
  The Problem: Protecting sensitive data in production SAP environments requires sophisticated access controls that don’t disrupt business operations. Traditional proxy-based approaches introduce security vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks, while static solutions fail to provide the granular, role-based access control needed for complex SAP user hierarchies.
  
  Mage Data’s Solution: Mage’s Dynamic Data Masking module offers six different deployment approaches for production SAP environments: embedded in database, database via proxy, application via database masking, application via API, application via REST API, and application via web proxy. This flexibility ensures seamless integration regardless of SAP architecture. The platform provides real-time, role-based masking directly at both the SAP database layer and application/UI layer across SAP GUI, SAP Fiori, and SAP UI5-based applications. With over 70 anonymization methods available, organizations can implement the optimal balance between security, performance, and data usability while maintaining consistent protection across their entire SAP landscape.
  
  
• Challenge 4: Third-Party Risk and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
  The Problem: A staggering 63% of all data breaches in 2024 involved vendors, making third-party risk management a critical concern for SAP environments. The interconnected nature of modern SAP deployments, with extensive integrations to external applications and service providers, creates multiple potential entry points for attackers.
  
  Mage Data’s Solution: Mage’s centrally managed, platform-agnostic approach ensures consistent data masking protection across all data repositories and environments, whether on-premises or cloud-hosted. The distributed agent architecture enables protection to be applied anywhere in the data flow while maintaining centralized policy management. This capability is particularly crucial for SAP RISE environments and hybrid cloud deployments where data flows across multiple vendor boundaries. The unified platform approach reduces the complexity that comes from managing multiple disparate security tools—addressing the challenge faced by 54% of organizations that currently use four or more tools for data risk management.

• Challenge 5: Regulatory Compliance and Audit Readiness
  
  The Problem: Global data privacy regulations continue to intensify, with GDPR fines alone surpassing €4.5 billion since 2018. CPRA penalties for intentional violations will increase to $7,500 per violation in 2025, while the annual revenue threshold for compliance has been lowered to $25 million. Organizations struggle with fragmented compliance approaches and lack integrated visibility into their data protection posture.
  
  Mage Data’s Solution: Mage provides pre-configured Data Masking templates specifically designed to comply with GDPR, CPRA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and other industry-specific regulations. The platform’s unified architecture provides a single pane of glass for managing discovery, classification, masking policies, access control, and monitoring across SAP and non-SAP systems. The integrated approach extends from sensitive data discovery through data lifecycle management, including automated data retirement capabilities through Data Retirement for inactive sensitive data. This comprehensive coverage ensures organizations can demonstrate compliance readiness and respond effectively to regulatory inquiries or audits.

What Makes Mage Data’s SAP Protection Unique

Research demonstrates that organizations implementing specialized third-party SAP security tools experience 42% fewer successful attacks compared to those relying solely on native capabilities. Mage Data’s differentiation lies in its comprehensive, integrated approach that addresses the complete data protection lifecycle within SAP environments.
Unlike point solutions that address individual aspects of data security, Mage provides a unified platform that seamlessly integrates discovery, masking, monitoring, and compliance across both production and non-production SAP environments. The platform’s distributed agent architecture ensures that sensitive data never leaves the target environment during protection processes, while centralized policy management maintains consistency across complex hybrid SAP deployments.
Mage’s deep SAP expertise is evident in its support for the full spectrum of SAP environments—from legacy ECC systems to modern S/4HANA and cloud-based RISE deployments. The platform’s ability to provide both database-level and application-level protection ensures comprehensive coverage regardless of how users access SAP data, whether through traditional SAP GUI, modern Fiori interfaces, or custom applications.
The platform’s scalability has been proven in enterprise environments processing terabytes of data across thousands of tables and millions of records, with performance optimizations that minimize impact on critical business operations. This combination of comprehensive functionality, proven scalability, and SAP-specific expertise positions Mage Data as the strategic partner for organizations serious about protecting their SAP investments.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mage Data delivers a comprehensive, multi-layered data security framework that protects sensitive information throughout its entire lifecycle. The first step begins with data classification and discovery, enabling organizations to locate and identify sensitive data across environments. This is followed by data cataloging and lineage tracking, offering a clear, traceable view of how sensitive data flows across systems.
In non-production environments, Mage Data applies static data masking (SDM) to generate realistic yet de-identified datasets, ensuring safe and effective use for testing and development. In production, a Zero Trust model is enforced through dynamic data masking (DDM), database firewalls, and continuous monitoring—providing real-time access control and proactive threat detection.
This layered security approach not only supports regulatory compliance with standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS but also minimizes risk while preserving data usability. By integrating these capabilities into a unified platform, Mage Data empowers organizations to safeguard their data with confidence—ensuring privacy, compliance, and long-term operational resilience.

Contact us to schedule a personalized demo of Mage’s SAP Data Protection platform and discover how we can help secure your organization’s most critical data assets.

• Mage Data’s Solution: Mage’s centrally managed, platform-agnostic approach ensures consistent data masking protection across all data repositories and environments, whether on-premises or cloud-hosted. The distributed agent architecture enables protection to be applied anywhere in the data flow while maintaining centralized policy management. This capability is particularly crucial for SAP RISE environments and hybrid cloud deployments where data flows across multiple vendor boundaries. The unified platform approach reduces the complexity that comes from managing multiple disparate security tools—addressing the challenge faced by 54% of organizations that currently use four or more tools for data risk management.