All security gaps in apps will be closed in 3-4 weeks: SAP CEO

By Gokul Bhagabati

SAP CEO Christian Klein has said all the security gaps in its Cloud products revealed last month will be closed in three to four weeks.

“We are fixing that in the next three to four weeks. Everything (all security gaps) will be closed and all of our apps will be running on the same high standards of security,” Klein told reporters, even as the company’s SAPPHIRE NOW Converge conference June 15–19 is being held online due the Covid-19 crisis.

The Germany-based global enterprise application software major last month said that the company had identified that some of its Cloud products did not meet one or several contractually agreed or statutory IT security standards.

“The executive board of SAP SE has decided today that SAP will inform and support the affected customers individually — approximately 9 per cent of SAP’s 440,000 customers,” the company said in a statement on May 4.

SAP said that it did not believe any customer data was compromised as a result of these issues.

In his interaction with reporters and analysts on Wednesday, Klein said that there was no security incident as a result of the gaps in some of the applications, but the company wanted to be honest and transparent with the customers.

“SAP has very high security standards which all of our products have to meet,” he said.

Citing a survey, the SAP CEO said that the company has received feedback from customers that SAP has made “clear progress” with its Cloud applications.

“We are getting better. We know we have more work to do, but we are on it,” he said.

The SAP CEO also apologised for the technical issue that led to delay in the start of the company’s biggest customer event, SAPPHIRE NOW, on Monday. The site hosting the event briefly crashed.

“There was huge interest. There were about 150,000 people who wanted to log in… I wanted to apologise for the technical issues we had,” he said.

(Gokul Bhagabati can be contacted at [email protected])