In an expanding cloud-driven digital landscape, safeguarding user identities is a top priority for every enterprise. SAP Identity Authentication plays an essential role in protecting access to applications, ensuring secure authentication, and enforcing strong compliance controls across both cloud and on-premise environments.
This blog outlines the core security features of SAP Identity Authentication and presents guidance designed to help administrators strengthen governance and protect identity infrastructure effectively.
Purpose of SAP Identity Authentication
With increasing application integrations and distributed identity systems, organizations require a secure and reliable identity management platform. SAP Identity Authentication provides:
- Secure and encrypted user authentication
- Strong password and session protection
- Network-level and data storage security
- Audit, monitoring, and traceability features
1Trooper enhances these capabilities with best-in-class implementation and governance to ensure optimized security posture for enterprises.
Communication Protocol Security
SAP Identity Authentication is a fully web browser–based solution that exclusively uses HTTPS for access. Every page is delivered over Transport Layer Security (TLS) and encrypted with 256-bit TLS, ensuring that authentication communication remains secure during transit. This prevents unauthorized interception or tampering of sensitive information exchanged between the user and the authentication service.
Password Security
SAP Identity Authentication follows strong password encryption and management standards:
- No plain-text passwords are stored in the database.
- Passwords are transformed into random-salted secure hash values, with a minimum 512-bit salt.
- Hashing uses cryptographic functions with ≥ 512-bit key length.
- Default passwords are never issued, used, or accepted.
When authentication involves on-premise systems:
- Passwords are not stored in Identity Authentication.
- User ID and password are securely transmitted via TLS to the on-premise authentication provider (e.g., Microsoft Active Directory).
The platform supports three security levels for password policies, enabling administrators to choose the highest protection level based on organizational compliance requirements.
Session Security
Session integrity is safeguarded through built-in protections, including:
- TLS encryption
- Secure flag
- HttpOnly cookie attributes
These measures prevent session hijacking, unauthorized access, and browser-based vulnerabilities. With these controls already enabled as default, no additional configuration is required from administrators to maintain session security.
Network & Communication Security
SAP Identity Authentication is deployed in a secure fenced network that operates independently of SAP’s internal corporate network. Although customer applications run in a shared cloud environment, each tenant’s business data remains fully isolated from others.
Strong security layers include:
- Strict firewall rules to regulate internal traffic
- SAP administrative access only via secured terminal services requiring strong authentication
- Full TLS encryption for all communication channels
To ensure secure integrations, all connected cloud applications must be configured to use TLS and validate SAML 2.0 signatures, guaranteeing trusted communication between systems.
Data Storage Security
Every customer receives an isolated tenant database, ensuring strong separation and independence of business data. Database requests are processed only through tenant-specific service identities, protected by a dependency injection framework that enforces service isolation.
This design ensures:
- No cross-tenant data visibility
- Dedicated application services per tenant
- Enforced identity-based access to stored data
Security-Relevant Logging & Tracing
SAP Identity Authentication provides comprehensive audit and monitoring capabilities:
- Administrators can export a CSV file with the complete history of performed operations
- Monthly logs provide statistics on total user login requests
- Every authentication event is recorded and traceable
These controls support compliance, forensic investigations, and proactive security monitoring.
Conclusion
1Trooper’s expertise in SAP Identity Authentication allows enterprises to build a secure identity ecosystem that protects data, applications, and end-users from evolving threats. With strong encryption, password governance, session protection, network security, tenant-isolated data storage, and robust auditing, SAP Identity Authentication delivers a scalable and future-ready identity security framework for modern businesses.