SAP data privacy: Why is an assessment your first step to compliance?

SUMMARY: With rising audit requirements and growing data volumes, data privacy compliance and risks within SAP landscapes have increased. Companies failing to take the necessary measures to comply with global data legislation requirements face serious consequences, including financial impact, reputational damage and operational risk. EPI-USE Labs offers a two-tiered approach to help companies assess their data privacy risk: a free data privacy and security assessment, and then a more comprehensive assessment, including a managed workshop and a detailed report. FAQs about this approach are covered in a recent webinar. 

As organisations finalise their planning for the 2026/2027 financial year, data privacy compliance and risks within SAP landscapes have become impossible to ignore. With rising audit requirements and growing data volumes, the responsibility to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is a business priority.

The cost of non-compliance

The global regulatory environment – encompassing laws such as the GDPR (Europe), POPIA (South Africa), PDPA (Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore), CCPA (California), PIPEDA (Canada) and PDPL (Saudi Arabia) – places the full burden of data protection on the company.

If you fail to take necessary measures, the consequences are serious. The financial impact can be huge. For example, under GDPR, fines can reach €20 million or 4% of a company’s global turnover. Notable GDPR fines issued in 2025 include:

• Meta: €1.2 billion fine for transferring personal data of European users to the US without adequate data protection mechanisms.
• Amazon: €746 million fine for tracking user data without appropriate consent. Uber: €290 million fine for unlawfully transferring personal data of European drivers to the US.

Recent POPIA fines include:

• Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DoJ&CD): Fined R5 million for failing to notify the Regulator of a security compromise that resulted in the loss of personal information.
• Department of Basic Education (DBE): Fined R5 million for failing to comply with an Enforcement Notice regarding the publication of matriculation results in newspapers.

In addition, companies face:

• Reputational damage: There is considerable brand damage if live or sensitive data is leaked into the public domain
• Operational risk: Increased vulnerability to insider threats and security breaches can disrupt core business functions.

The critical ‘non-production’ gap

A big blind spot for many SAP users is the security of non-production environments. These systems often have wider access and less precise authorisations, and are frequently accessed by external contractors.

• Under sections 2.1.1 through 2.1.3 of the SAP Data Processing Agreement, non-production environments are excluded from the scope of SAP's protection if they contain personal data
• If a breach occurs in a non-production system containing live data, the liability sits completely with the SAP customer.

Read more: Test data privacy in SAP: why is non-production your biggest blind spot?

How to understand your data privacy risk: A two-tiered approach

EPI-USE Labs provides two pathways to help organisations understand their risk without disrupting their business operations. Both methods use a non-invasive transport applied to your environment.

The free data privacy and security assessment

This option allows you to confirm the scale of potential non-compliance issues without financial investment:

• The tool purely reads metadata and does not expose or remove any actual PII
• Results can be reviewed by the client before being shared for analysis.

The comprehensive assessment

This is a five-day functional engagement carried out over a one- to two-week period:

• A consultant executes the discovery and performs a deep-dive analysis of the system
• It includes a managed workshop session with your Data Privacy Officer (DPO), test leads, and data owners
• You receive a formal report documenting PII mapping, retention process flows, and cross-system integrations.

Deep-dive data discovery: finding ‘shadow’ PII

Because SAP data is interconnected, PII can spread beyond standard tables. Our discovery software uses intellectual property developed over 25 years to scan the data dictionary:

• The tool identifies PII in custom tables and fields that standard tools often miss
• This step ensures that when you eventually scramble or erase data, no ‘orphaned’ PII remains in the system.

Bridging the gap between compliance and functionality

The value of the comprehensive assessment is the managed workshop, which aligns conflicting internal expectations:

• The DPO’s view: Typically wants to scramble or remove all data to ensure 100% compliance
• The functional team’s view: Needs high-quality, high-integrity data for accurate testing of business processes
• The solution: Our experts help find the ‘middle ground’, maintaining a functional system for testing while meeting requirements for data privacy legislation.

From assessment to remediation

The assessment report serves as a definitive scoping document for your privacy implementation. Common gaps addressed after the assessment include:

• Data scrambling: Using Data Secure™ – part of the EPI-USE Labs’ Data Privacy Suite for SAP solutions – to mask non-production systems
• Data requests: Using Data Disclose™ – also part of the EPI-USE Labs’ Suite – to respond to employee or customer data access requests quickly
• Data redaction: Implementing Data Redact™ – also part of the EPI-USE Labs’ Suite – to automate the removal of data that has met its retention limit.

Depending on the number of customisations in your SAP landscape, these risks can typically be remediated within a span of two weeks to three months.

Secure your SAP landscape for the future

‘Guessing’ where your data resides is a liability. Whether you are looking to prove compliance to auditors, or simply want to protect your organisation from the reputational damage following a breach, the path forward starts with clear visibility.

Don’t leave your non-production systems exposed or your retention policies to chance. Leverage our many years of SAP expertise to build a data privacy strategy that is both compliant and functionally robust.

Ready to uncover your hidden SAP risks? Book your SAP data privacy assessment service, and discover how our comprehensive sessions can provide the roadmap you need for compliance in 2026.