Teaming up with IBM to secure critical SAP workloads

SAP has been helping business leaders make better decisions for over 50 years. Its enterprise software drives competitive advantage for nine out of ten Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of thousands of other enterprise and SME customers around the globe. Business-critical data and the systems it flows through are also popular targets for threat actors, which is why Trend Micro is partnering with the computing giant IBM to boost protection for SAP customers running software on IBM Power servers.

The combination of IBM and Trend Vision One™ will combine scalable server and workload infrastructure with multi-layered threat protection, detection, and response—to help mitigate cyber risk across an expanding attack surface.

Threats are building

IBM Power is the perfect fit for SAP, offering built-in virtualization and capacity on-demand to support data-hungry workloads. Customers have been able to take advantage of the partnership since 2004, and IBM Power has supported SAP’s flagship HANA database platform since 2015.

Yet many SAP customers still lack sufficient protection to safeguard critical data residing on their servers and workloads. This is particularly important in the context of several overlapping trends:

• Threat actors are increasingly keen to steal data and sabotage business-critical systems; ransomware and extortion accounted for a third of data breaches last year, according to Verizon.
• The complexity of diverse modules, customizations, and integrations can create security gaps, making SAP on IBM Power an attractive target.
• Known and zero-day vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and legacy components are also combined further to expand the SAP/IBM Power attack surface.
• File-based threats could arrive via email attachments, file transfers, uploads, or external integrations.
• Cybersecurity regulations (such as the EU’s DORA) are becoming increasingly rigorous and prescriptive about building cyber-resilience.

Joining forces

IBM has a proven track record in system security, which involves a multi-layered approach of hardware-accelerated transparent memory encryption, quantum-safe cryptography, and fully homomorphic encryption to protect data end to end. However, as enterprise customers continue to modernize out of traditional secure data centers, IBM recognizes the need to partner with a security leader to protect these diverse IT environments.

SAP also recognized the need for an additional layer of security on IBM’s servers and directed the firm to contact Trend Micro as the recommended cybersecurity vendor due to their unique SAP-certified integration that can also support legacy Operating Systems running on IBM Power.

IBM needed a provider to unify visibility and control across physical, virtual, and cloud workloads. This is what Trend Vision One was specifically designed for: to help customers build resilience against attacks and enhance their threat detection and response efforts.

Trend Vision One offers:

• Centralized visibility and management to enhance productivity for stretched teams.
• AI-powered XDR to help analysts prioritize threat alerts and respond faster.
• Attack surface risk management (ASRM) to continually assess risk across hybrid cloud environments and drive automated remediation (e.g., fixing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations)
• Dedicated threat protection across legacy and modern operating systems in physical, virtual, and cloud environments
• Virtual patching to protect assets against known and zero-day threats.
• File integrity monitoring is used to check for unexpected changes to registry values, registry keys, services, processes, installed software, ports, and files.
• Log inspection to identify possible compromises buried within operating systems and application logs.
• SAP Scanner for Vision One supports SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA® in performing on-demand file scanning for possible malicious content hidden in documents.

The combination of IBM Power and Trend Micro delivers a combined value greater than the sum of its parts while driving revenue opportunities for both parties. Ultimately, it will provide peace of mind so our joint customers can focus on what they do best—using SAP to drive sustainable growth.

To find out more:

Review the Trend One Security with IBM Power Solution Brief

Read the IBM Power Announcement Blog

Read More HERE