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Technology is affecting how Accounts Payable teams manage their day-to-day operations. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems allow you to plan and manage every resource and task you undertake. To counter this trend, each year, more ERP systems are becoming compromised by cyber attacks that gain access to sensitive data.
Let’s look at these ERP statistics to understand better the cybercrime trends and the preventative steps being taken.
According to Market Share Analysis by Gartner, market leaders suggest that the ERP software market is consistently growing. The reason for the growth is organisations are finding ERP systems more beneficial allowing them to enhance business reporting in their day-to-day tasks.
The Computer Weekly IT Priorities survey shows that companies across Europe are committed to upgrading their data centre infrastructure. However, enterprise resource planning remains the strongest category for packaged business applications.
The main reasons for updating an ERP system are weak controls and weak functionality as well as the inability to control the risks involved. Upgrading or updating ERP systems is one of the best ways to achieve full ERP security.
Research from Onapsis suggests that SAP and Oracle suffered a data breach resulting in a loss of sales data, HR data, personal customer information, intellectual property and financial data. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of businesses rely on SAP or Oracle. Due to its connection to the web, ERP can pose a security risk.
It is best to always have the latest ERP patches applied, as it ensures secure ERP systems. In a situation where ERP software isn’t updated, a data breach is very likely to occur. As a safety measure, companies that install advanced security technologies also need to have accounting protocols in place to minimise the risks of cyberattacks.
Cybercriminals prefer to target ERP systems, as well as phishing and brute force attacks. Each year, they come up with new and inventive ways to steal your information or defraud your financial accounts. One of the main causes of a compromised ERP system is that CFOs are unable to monitor their system’s security regularly.
The findings shed light on how cybercriminals and hacktivist groups are actively targeting organisations to disrupt business operations. Cybercriminals are likely to compromise ERP systems due to leaked information by third parties and employees.
Most of the cyber attacks that occur often happen in the countries listed above. This becomes an ideal testing ground for hackers attempting to target small-range attacks. Large organisations are usually targeted with ERP attacks due to their poor security controls around their ERP environment.
Not focusing on I.T cybersecurity but rather just on general I.T controls can leave a company exposed. Accounts payable teams must apply security patches early to often mitigate ERP systems compromises.
Poor maintenance, a lack of budgeting, irregular implementation, or lack of continuous monitoring are some of the causes of ERP failures. In Revlon’s case, it had opted in 2016 to establish connections with a new ERP provider named SAP Hana. A lack of effective controls led to the company losing millions of dollars due to a disastrous event.
ERP implementations can be costly, but failure to budget and secure adequate funding before starting will result in a failed implementation. Most CFOs and AP teams fail to budget the process during the implementation and after.
During Hershey’s ERP implementation period, the chocolate giant suffered a major failure. Due to the Y2K incident, the firm rushed to complete the project. An attempt to use the resource planning technologies at the same time resulted in failed system testing, data migration and training.
Early in the 2000s, Nike lost $100 million due to a software glitch in its new upgraded supply chain system ERP solution. Other ERP problems occurred, including bugs and performance difficulties. Millions were lost, but the company also lost millions in lawsuits and had 20% of its stock dropped.
For any organisation, ERP failure statistics can be daunting to hear. When it comes to renewing or replacing an ERP system, several factors are involved. A strategic plan must be in place before transitioning to cover all areas during, before and after implementation. Other than technology, employees must be adequately trained.
One of the main causes of ERP implementation failure is weak budgeting. Poor management communication and short-cutting training programs often lead to a disastrous ERP transition. Employees who aren’t educated on the new software application can pose ERP risks involving compromised systems.
There are several ways organisations can avoid operational disruption. Some of the most successful often implement a sophisticated plan that details all aspects of the execution phase. This usually involves, analysing operational challenges, key business partners that involve communication, building a bulletproof QA process & measuring performance.
It’s common for organisations to fail at business process reengineering. When manual working is used to change standard ERP modules, business reengineering can fail. One way organisations can attack this is through a strong pre-planned strategy for parallel engineering.
CFOs and AP teams must work together as a team to ensure cloud ERP security. To maximise security, CFOs and AP teams shouldn’t solely depend on cloud ERP security. An ongoing awareness program and security culture must be maintained to minimise the chances of cyber-attacks.
More and more, companies are making the switch from in-house technologies to cloud-based enterprise applications to become more efficient, have more control, and increase accessibility.
On-premise ERP and cloud ERP differ primarily by the location of the data. Some businesses choose cloud-based ERP based on the benefits and features it offers over on-premise. Cloud computing has the advantage of high levels of security.
Over the past decade, companies have been gradually adopting next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions due to the expectations of traditional ERP vendors. Digitalization and new ways of working have always been important to the business. However, post-COVID-19 ERP systems will accelerate the adoption.
Many companies still view cloud ERP systems as more secure and resilient environments even after well-publicised incidents of cloud ERP data loss. According to Oracle, 40% of respondents agree that public clouds are much more secure. Security teams and IT professionals are still wary of the cloud-based threat.
From an Onapsis survey, nearly 2 of 3 organisations using enterprise resource planning platforms in the last 24 months have had a security breach according to I.T decision-makers. Some of the breaches targeted ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle, which are one of the most popular ERP platforms. On-premise or cloud-based ERP systems currently present vulnerability when it comes to cyber-attacks.
In most cases, cloud ERPs are considered to be the most secure option, as they provide greater security and service updates. Traditionally, enterprise-level ERP servers are managed by their respective enterprises. However, cloud-based ERP vendors host applications and data on specialized Cloud databases protected by highly skilled firewalls to guard against malicious attacks.
ERP systems are susceptible to becoming exposed. These vulnerabilities make ERP systems more likely to be exploited by hackers. Issues like, updates being delayed, lack of staff training, and rights to access could result in security vulnerabilities if the issues are not managed well. This could lead to ERP systems becoming compromised by malware.
Identifying, defending against and recovering from ERP attacks is an important part of the ERP security process as companies transfer or upgrade to new platforms. One approach is to restrict accessibility and implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Restricted access helps organizations become more secure by allocating access rights to individual employees.
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