For more than five decades, SAP has enabled business decision-makers to enhance their strategic choices. Its corporate software drives a competitive edge for nine out of every ten Fortune 500 firms and numerous other large enterprises and SME clients worldwide. Business-critical information and the systems through which it travels are also prime targets for malicious actors, which is why Trend Micro has forged a partnership with the computing titan IBM to bolster security for SAP customers operating software on IBM Power servers.
The amalgamation of IBM and Trend Vision One™ will merge adaptable server and workload infrastructure with multi-layered defense, identification, and reaction mechanisms—to help diminish cyber threats across an expanding attack landscape.
Risks are mounting
IBM Power is the ideal choice for SAP, providing integrated virtualization and on-demand capacity to cater to data-intensive workloads. Clients have been able to leverage this partnership since 2004, and IBM Power has been supporting SAP’s flagship HANA database platform since 2015.
Nevertheless, numerous SAP customers still lack adequate protection to secure vital data hosted on their servers and workloads. This becomes particularly crucial in light of various concurrent trends:
- Malicious actors are increasingly eager to pilfer data and disrupt business-critical systems; ransomware and extortion accounted for a third of data breaches last year, as reported by Verizon.
- The intricacy of diverse modules, personalizations, and integrations can create security loopholes, making SAP on IBM Power an appealing target.
- Known and undiscovered vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and outdated components collectively amplify the SAP/IBM Power attack surface.
- Threats via files could infiltrate through email attachments, file transfers, uploads, or external integrations.
- Cybersecurity standards (like the EU’s DORA) are growing stricter and more explicit about reinforcing cyber resilience.
Combining strengths
IBM boasts a recognized history in system security, employing a layered strategy comprising hardware-accelerated transparent memory encryption, quantum-safe cryptography, and entirely homomorphic encryption to safeguard data from end to end. However, as enterprise customers increasingly transition away from conventional secure data centers, IBM acknowledges the necessity of allying with a security frontrunner to safeguard these diversified IT environments.
SAP also acknowledged the need for an additional security layer on IBM’s servers and advised the company to engage with Trend Micro as the endorsed cybersecurity provider, thanks to their distinct SAP-certified integration that can also accommodate legacy OS running on IBM Power.
IBM required a vendor to consolidate oversight and authority over physical, virtual, and cloud workloads. This is precisely the purpose for which Trend Vision One was specifically devised: to aid customers in fortifying their defenses against attacks and enhancing their threat identification and response endeavors.
Trend Vision One provides:
- Centralized oversight and management to boost efficiency for stretched teams.
- AI-driven XDR to assist analysts in prioritizing threat alarms and reacting promptly.
- Assault surface risk management (ASRM) to continuously evaluate risk across hybrid cloud environments and drive automatic rectification (for instance, rectifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations).
- Dedicated threat defense across outdated and modern operating systems in physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
- Virtual patching for shielding assets against known and undiscovered threats.
- Monitoring file integrity to detect unanticipated alterations to registry values, registry keys, services, processes, installed software, ports, and files.
- Inspection of logs to uncover potential compromises concealed within operating systems and application logs.
- SAP Scanner for Vision One supports SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA® by performing on-demand file scans for potential malicious content camouflaged in documents.
The synergistic approach of IBM Power and Trend Micro delivers an amalgamated value surpassing the individual components’ worth, simultaneously creating revenue prospects for both sides. Essentially, this collaboration will offer reassurance to our shared customers, enabling them to concentrate on leveraging SAP to drive sustainable progress.
For more information:
Explore the Trend One Security with IBM Power Solution Brief
Read the IBM Power Announcement Blog
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