In a recent SAP Insider article, SAP unveiled some interesting news around security auditing and information protection. In SAP NetWeaver Application Server (AS) ABAP 7.40 they included a new functionality called Read Access Logging (RAL). The current version supports Web Dynpro ABAP, web service, and RFC calls. Support for ABAP Dynpro is planned for a later release. SAP also has announced availability for release 7.31 near-time and is planning further “downports” to earlier versions.
What does this feature provide? RAL allows you to log access to defined sensitive data in these systems, as well as to define which access shall be logged. The configuration of logging is rather flexible. Logs then can be searched and viewed to analyze access to the information that is monitored.
However, RAL does not support automated analysis of the collected information. The logical next step would be to automatically act on this data, by analyzing it and identifying signs of fraud. Given that SAP has technology to do that in place – just think about SAP HANA as a platform for such analytics and SAP Fraud Management as a solution that allows you to deal with fraud – this would help customers to really have a solution on hand.
Despite this gap – it’s not about logging, but about making use of log data – this is an interesting feature for Information Security and SAP Security and worth to evaluate in detail.