The Significance of User Behavior Analytics in ERP Data Security

 With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the globe, remote work has become an essential need for organizations during these uncertain and particularly challenging times. With a large percentage of organizations' workforce working remotely, valid concerns, relating mostly to data security and access management have cropped up among senior executives and data administrators.

Remote Work: A Necessity

Prior to COVID-19, the objectives of allowing remote access were a desire for efficiency and flexibility. For years, remote access has been of considerable value to forward-thinking organizations. Post COVID-19, companies are in 'survival mode' and have no choice but to open up access and hope for the best for their most critical financial transactions and confidential data. In a remote work setting, the chances of conducting transactions that result in financial losses are immense, and such a situation requires a robust data security policy and relevant data security solutions to ensure peace of mind.

Lack of Visibility

The situation that enterprises are facing during these uncertain times is critical. For instance, consider the following questions that executives have these days: "How can I know who viewed wage data, or maybe downloaded queries?" "How can I be confident that unauthorized suppliers are not being created?" "How can I ensure that the payroll is correctly issued?" "How can I be sure the confidential data is not uploaded to someone's home computer?'' These questions make it amply clear that organizations are clueless and have started to panic.

ERP Visibility: Falling Short

Traditional ERP logging and analytics emphasis on troubleshooting errors and scanning for large system vulnerabilities is common knowledge. They have not been configured to understand user behavior, access to data, and its usage. ERP visibility is unable to fulfill the objective of ensuring that data is not maliciously accessed, exfiltrated, or that business processes are not abused.

The enterprises using Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) are satisfied. But the focus of companies has shifted from intrusion prevention to incident response and risk management. While they can guarantee that user authentication is reliable, they lack the ability to understand in minute detail what type of user behavior occurred. And more notably, if user behavior patterns are suggestive of malicious activity.

ERP Analytics: Essential Tool

This is where ERP data Analytics is becoming relevant. With legacy ERP systems, the capability to detect and respond to malicious behavior is significantly diminished when ERP access is both remote and ubiquitous.

Data security and analytics tools allow organizations to precisely understand how their ERP information is accessed by whom, when, where, and why. Organizations are significantly empowered to detect malicious activity with granular visibility and formulate a swift response before the damage becomes catastrophic.

Conclusion

It goes without saying that it is heartening if we are able to serve and satisfy our customers truly. This is where data security and analytics solutions can ensure complete peace of mind with the granular visibility and optimum control that they offer. This is particularly true if critical financial transactions are executed, and crucial data is accessed away outside of the office network. Therefore, it's high time enterprises deployed the right data security and analytics solutions.