Network and Communication Security

Use

Your network infrastructure is extremely important for your system security. Your network needs to support the communication necessary for your business needs without allowing unauthorized access. A well-defined network topology can eliminate many security threats based on software flaws (at operating system level and application level) or network attacks such as eavesdropping. If users cannot log on to your application or database servers at the operating system or database layer, then there is no way for intruders to compromise the machines and gain access to the backend system's database or files. In addition, if users are not able to connect to the server LAN (local area network), they cannot exploit known bugs and security gaps in network services on the servers.

The network topology for the SAP BW (BW) is based on the topology used by the SAP NetWeaver platform. For this reason, the security guidelines and recommendations described in the Security Guide for SAP NetWeaver are also valid for BW. Details that are especially relevant for BW are described in the following sections.