Your auditor will find it. But when?
The average fraud scheme runs for 12 months before it is detected. Twelve months in which transactions are manipulated, payments redirected, or vendor records altered, unnoticed, through ordinary SAP access.
According to the ACFE Occupational Fraud Report, the typical organisation loses 5% of its annual revenue to fraud. That figure feels abstract, until you apply it to your own numbers.
The question is not whether fraud can occur in your SAP environment. The question is: will you see it before your auditor does?
What fraud in SAP actually looks like
Most SAP fraud is not a sophisticated external attack. Fraudsters exploit gaps in processes, permissions, and oversight, using legitimate access in illegitimate ways.
Common examples include:
- An employee who can both create vendorand process payments (a classic SoD conflict)
- A former employee whose account was never deactivated
- An emergency "firefighter" access session that was never closed
- Someone with the ability to modify both salary data and HR master records
A Segregation of Duties conflict, where a single user can both maintain vendor master data and execute payments, is one of the most prevalent and dangerous risks in SAP. It does not appear in any job description. But it exists in the system.
Why it stays invisible for so long
SAP environments are complex. Roles accumulate over years, employees change positions, and no one has a complete picture of who can do what. The ACFE 2024 report found that more than half of all fraud cases were linked to weak internal controls or management override of existing controls.
Spreadsheets and manual checks do not provide real-time visibility. They show you what existed yesterday, not what is happening right now.
What you need: visibility before the incident
Effective access control in SAP is not about blocking people. It is about knowing who can do what — and whether that aligns with their role.
In practice, that means:
- Access Risk Analysis: automatically detecting SoD conflicts and critical access rights
- Risk Simulation: understanding the impact of a role change before it is applied
- Real-time reporting: continuous insight, not a snapshot produced once a year at audit time
How CERPASS addresses this
CERPASS is a SAP-native access control solution built for organisations that want control over access risk, without the complexity and cost of a full GRC platform.
With CERPASS, you get:
- Immediate visibility into SoD conflicts and critical access via intuitive dashboards
- Risk simulation before changes are applied
- Audit-ready reports available at any time, not only when your auditor calls
Implementation in days, not months. SAP-native, available via the SAP Store.
Conclusion: do not wait for the auditor
Every month a fraud scheme goes undetected, the losses grow. The tools to prevent this exist, and they do not have to be expensive or complex.
Want to know what your SAP access risk looks like today? Request a demo and we will show you in your own environment.
👉 Request a demo | sales@cerpasssoftware.com
CERPASS® is SAP-certified and available via the SAP Store. #simpleGRC