Conventional wisdom would say that hosting your ERP in an on-premise environment contained in a siloed server onsite would be more secure than relying on a remote cloud, yet in practice the opposite has often proven true. There are many reasons why legacy systems are major cyber risks, and the reality is that most of these solutions are caught between their own technological antiquity and the growing interconnectivity of new technology, amplifying the threat.
The logical conclusion would be to migrate to a SaaS (Software as a Service) application for your financial management and reporting, but if for whatever reason your business is not ready for a full migration to a new system, then the good news is that there is a way to continue using your existing enterprise accounting system by hosting it in a secure, cloud-based environment. Keep reading below to learn more about the security shortfalls of on-premise ERP, and how a private cloud can help protect you:
Lack of Visibility
Legacy software has many disadvantages, but perhaps the biggest is how siloed their databases are inherently, becoming more burdensome as your operations grow and your team is forced to copy data manually just to maintain visibility. However, this lack of insight has even worse implications for your cybersecurity, especially when modern hackers increasingly rely on discretion and subterfuge to exploit unnoticed gaps within your network.
Your data silos around your disconnected systems hosted on-premise can easily turn into a worse security risk as your operations expand and it becomes even harder to keep track of all of the disparate databases within your application stack, giving bad actors even more opportunity to work unseen. However, cloud-based software feature real-time connections between endpoints, allowing your team to capture consistent visibility into your silos.
Emerging Threats vs. Software Updates
The speed at which new cyber threats emerge far outpaces the ability of legacy software to meet these risks, as most of these systems are already very far behind the level of protection required to address the severity of new malware types and hacking techniques. This creates a poignant challenge in keeping on-premise ERP up to date, which is a difficult process even before cybersecurity becomes a factor at play.
Performing upgrades on traditional legacy systems hosted in onsite servers is typically a burdensome chore at best, requiring manual maintenance and system downtime for the duration. Any cloud-based solution will be much easier to update, as all of the work can be applied in the background. Additionally, hosting in a remote environment allows your service provider to perform testing more easily without having to restart the process all over if anything needs to be corrected.
Lack of Vendor Support
Outdated software is a growing cybersecurity danger for every connected network because of both how increasingly “plugged in” technology is becoming, and the lack of support for legacy systems. Vendors like Microsoft, SAP, Sage, Oracle and others typically cease providing updates and fixes for their older applications as they lose the incentive to continue devoting resources and time to managing the security gaps that inevitably form within them.
Once a system reaches “End of Life” (EOL), it is no longer supported by its publisher and will receive no hotfixes or full patches for bugs or other cyber risks, leaving you vulnerable to hackers looking to exploit your shrinking security net. That is why cloud service providers (CSPs) monitor hosted applications directly, providing direct protection for your software environment until it is time to migrate to a better supported solution.
Siloed Security Controls
Most on-premise ERP systems were designed during an era when cybersecurity meant building walls around the components of your IT ecosystem, but modern threats have evolved far beyond these outdated measures. Your firewall protects the network, your antivirus scans individual workstations, and your software has its own user authentication — but none of these tools communicate effectively with each other. Hackers can run circles around these fragmented security controls, leveraging their siloed nature to break in undetected, and hopping on hidden “shadow” connections from unsecured devices or applications to penetrate deeper into your disparate databases.
Legacy ERP applications also generally lack the ability to log and detect suspicious activity the way more modern solutions are able to, further stalling your response time to a potential – or actual – breach in your network. Working with a cloud service provider to host your on-premise software grants you the benefit of more proactive and up-to-date security controls implemented by your CSP, who can also monitor connections to your system’s data in real-time.
Misconfiguration Errors
Perhaps no factor contributes more to on-premise ERP vulnerabilities than the complexity of properly configuring these systems for both security and broader usage internally. With potentially hundreds of authorization objects and thousands of possible permission combinations, even experienced IT professionals struggle to implement secure configurations without inadvertently creating gaps in protection. Common mistakes include using default administrative passwords, granting excessive user permissions, and failing to properly segregate duties between different business functions.
This dilemma is further compounded for legacy systems in modern technology stacks, whose native configuration settings were not built for more contemporary types of cyber threats. This means that a simple error in configuring your software for synchronizing data with another application can create a huge cybersecurity gap. These kinds of misconfigurations must be monitored for and protected against, which a cloud hosting provider can help you handle on the backend.
Integration Risks
As many of the previous points illustrate, there are several cyber risks that can emerge from trying to force your on-premise ERP to integrate with newer systems, which presents its own significant challenge – getting your accounting software to work seamlessly with the other applications you rely on to successfully run your business. Some organizations will opt to “jury rig” custom integrations to sync data between solutions, but yet again, this creates the potential for new security nightmares to form if an attacker uncovers a misconfiguration in these workarounds. Each customized connection increases your attack surface, providing additional entry points that malicious actors can exploit to gain access to your critical data.
The problem can also become worse as your business grows and requires even more connectors between your ERP and other applications, making it even harder to keep track of security configurations or suspicious activity in your network between systems. This is where working with the right hosting partner will make the difference, as working with a provider that has clear expertise with your particular enterprise software will give you better options for optimizing your entire application stack.
Secure Your ERP with Secure Cloud Hosting by SWK Technologies
While the security vulnerabilities inherent in on-premise ERP systems may seem overwhelming, SWK Technologies can help. By leveraging our Secure Cloud Hosting service, you will gain the best of both worlds by ensuring your financial management software is protected against modern cyber threats without having to migrate to a SaaS solution until your business is ready.
Contact SWK here to learn more cloud hosting and discover how we can help you eliminate the security gaps that put your ERP data at risk.