If you're reading this, there's a good chance you use an ERP system (or multiple). The configuration of your ERP is critical to your organization's success. Open the settings menu in any software, and you can adjust configurations. Configurations tell your application how to operate - they are the adjustments that calibrate your application to run optimally for your business environment. But when your application doesn’t run optimally, it can cause risk to manifest in your organization. To ensure that your application stays in its optimal settings, your configurations must be managed carefully and tracked, or your business could suffer process bottlenecks, waste, and fraud. This blog explores how you can reduce Cloud ERP risks with application configuration monitoring. 

Configurations

Many steps are involved in cloud implementations, and configuration is one of the most critical. Correctly setting your configurations leads to better user satisfaction when data automatically fills in frequently used fields. Management also benefits from the proper setting of configurations because the right decisions are set as the application's default. For example, proper configurations can:

• Prevent a customer's correct credit limit from being exceeded
• Block journal entries from being posted to a journal that should not allow manual entries
• Prevent unauthorized amounts refunded to the customer upon return of the product

In short, your configurations define the financial controls of your ERP. ERP Configuration Monitoring helps you to mitigate financial and operational risks by ensuring the accuracy and consistency of application configurations required for processing business transactions within your ERP system. You can monitor the accuracy of system configuration by benchmarking the setups against the Controls Catalog, which contains thousands of critical configuration descriptions and recommended options. You can also detect system misconfigurations against the baseline setup for each ERP module approved by management. Having accurate records of the state of your systems is essential, and baselining an attribute can ensure that formal configuration change control processes are effective.

Configuration Monitoring ensures the consistency of ERP configuration by identifying variations in setups that occur because “the user” changes key setup values such as journal source for posting entries in General Ledger or setup parameter for a 3-way match in the Payables module. Configuration Monitoring can also help maintain the timeliness of the application setup changes required when you upgrade your ERP or deploy to new business units.

What to look for in a solution?

A solution should enable you to create monitors that track changes across multiple database objects and provide business-friendly reports and closed-loop workflows on configuration changes that impact business. This allows business control owners to respond to risk events by understanding the impact of the configuration change in the EPR system based on a clear description of the control objective.

An ERP application is not a one-size fits all product. If you have taken the time to fine-tune your application, ensure it remains that way. Performance problems that affect your ERP can lead to lost revenue and business if not resolved quickly. In enterprise businesses, maintaining a high level of system availability and health is critical. Monitoring in these complex environments is challenging. A detailed view of your ERP's performance enables the optimization of operations. SafePaaS Configurations Monitoring provides real-time ERP applications monitoring, ensuring:

• Enhanced accuracy
• Lower long-term cost
• A smooth procure-to-pay cycle
• Guaranteed three-way match
• Minimizes remediation re-work, and 
• Provides the most effective control baseline

The most critical driver of configuration monitoring is to eliminate surprises. Nobody wants to be surprised with a control weakness or fraud. MonitorPaaS™ adds an additional layer of assurance that provides robust security controls, implements best practices into your security program, and strategically advances risk remediation by addressing the root causes of identified vulnerabilities. MonitorPaaS™ configuration monitoring ensures constant protection and surveillance against risk.

Case study

Our customer is a global brand that operates in over 100 countries. The customer operates a hybrid environment and runs both Oracle EBS and Oracle ERP Cloud with hundreds of other applications, including ServiceNow (ITSM) and SailPoint (IDM).

The customer selected SafePaaS to help them with the following challenges:

• Lack of automated fine-grained Segregation of Duties controls monitoring
• Lack of visibility into configuration changes
• An inconsistent user provisioning policy
• No common controls or audit trail 
• Lack of integration in current security management systems
• Risk of Data theft, fraud, and abuse by Service Accounts  

SafePaaS worked with the client to compose a list of key configuration controls to enable audit tracking of the configuration controls. Using MonitorPaaS™, the customer implemented object-level tracking, which allowed the customer to see who made changes to the form in Oracle and when the change was made, along with the old and new values. SafePaaS offers this functionality in the cloud and on-premises. 

The benefits for the customer were clear. They could easily:

• Demonstrate to their auditors that they were tracking key configurations
• Monitor and enforce SoD controls, protect sensitive access, and restrict access to sensitive data
• Streamline and reduce risk remediation time for access controls 
• Save time by using a self-service policy-based solution for all identities and service accounts
• Control each provisioning request against access policies 
• Streamline and automate access certification

MonitorPaaS™ is especially valuable if you partner with a managed services provider, systems integrator, third parties, or an external team supporting and managing your configurations. SafePaaS provides the confidence that only the desired configuration changes are being made and nothing else.