Description:
Critical vulnerability identified for SAP Systems based on SAP JAVA Stack.
The RECON (Remotely Exploitable Code On NetWeaver) vulnerability has a CVSS score of 10 out of 10 (the most severe)

Symptom:
LM Configuration Wizard of SAP NetWeaver AS JAVA, does not perform an authentication check which allows an attacker without prior authentication, to execute configuration tasks to perform critical actions against the SAP Java system, including the ability to create an administrative user, and therefore compromising Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the system.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit just like the children’s game of musical chairs. As the music of our economy stopped, if you were not near a safe place to sit, you were caught out in the open…finding yourself at risk. Similarly, your EPM solution was likely being enhanced, and upgraded on a certain path before the virus came into being. Any EPM strategy not ready for intensified operations learned the hidden weaknesses of their solution.

To make you feel better, almost no EPM solution was ready for this.

Whatever the state was of your EPM solution, that is the tool you had to wield as you navigated your organization through  the impacts of the virus. As we said in part one of this blog series, the jarring impact to the market doesn’t specifically need to be the virus, it could be anything. Just some unpredictable market influence that won’t wait for long running processes.

How many children are now learning via laptop or pad on the couch?  And how many of you are now having to take virtual SAP BPC training since face-to-face training has been affected due to social distancing?

Many of us in the workforce have taken eLearning courses ourselves – which can be defined as educational content that is consumed via digital technology. This may surprise some, but eLearning has been around for about 22 years now and has been evolving at an explosive pace. From plastic laminated slides, to CD-ROM disks, and now micro-eLearning on your cell phone, learning and development has been continuously impacting our youth as well as ourselves.

SAP BPC Best Practices MEETS Prebuilt BPC Implementation Templates

THE PROBLEM |SAP Business Planning and Consolidation comes as a platform requiring you to build your application on your own.  As you’re probably painfully aware, this typically takes your forever to finish…if ever, and leads to cost cutting, a slow system, and a one-off solution.  In the end, your BPC implementation ends up not supportable beyond the original architect and doesn’t have any SAP BPC best practices baked in during rollout.  The Darwin EPM suite was originally developed as a program within Column5, to incorporate the knowledge of 100’s of BPC implementations into prebuilt solution modules naturally fixing these problems while handling 80% of a typical user’s needs.  Keep reading to see how this will work for you. 

"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis. ' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity." 

John F. Kennedy, US President 

It's the sort of blockbuster movie plot you'd expect to see while sitting in the dark confines of a movie theater, booming audio and a gasping crowd. A thrilling plot has your eyes riveted to the screen, where the dramatic tension is only broken when you run out of popcorn or the movie ends. In that scenario, you can return to your "real life" in a little over an hour, with no discernible life altering impact. It is now clear this COVID-19 provocateur is no movie; this virus will not go away so quietly without leaving an indelible impact on the world.  It most certainly will impact how you and the leadership team rely on your EPM software and Enterprise Performance Management in general. 

For this article, we'll define EPM software as Gartner does as dealing with “the process of monitoring performance across the enterprise with the goal of improving business performance.”  Other activities we'll include under the Enterprise Performance Management umbrella are FP&A modeling, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and consolidation.  Keep reading to find out how our plot unfolds. You'll learn how to avoid high latency, Excel centric planning.  You'll also learn 3 stages of recovery and the leadership principles needed to accelerate  your Enterprise Performance Management and remodeling during COVID-19. 

Column5 is excited to announce the release of the 2020 EPM Leadership Summit Agenda.  A unique opportunity for users of SAP BPC and SAC Solutions to learn, share and network in its 11th successful year! Part of a series of over 40 events promoting SAP EPM worldwide. Coverage has included 20 US cities, Canada, the Philippines, Singapore, Milan, London, and counting. Don’t miss out on our growing community of SAP EPM users – join us in Vegas this year!

Is there an EPM Summit this year? What is this Network?!

If you’ve ever been to the legendary Column5 EPM Summit event, I know what you’re probably thinking. ‘The event was so awesome, I networked with great people, took in great content, engaged in deep discussions, found solutions to our problems, learned so much with hands on practice…it was even fun.  

Why would you ever change the EPM Summit Leadership Event to the EPM Summit Network? As the kids would text: IKR? (If you’re like me and recently find yourself in the 50+ demographic, that means: ‘I know, right?’) 

We all played the old game “rock, paper, scissors” (aka Rochambeau) to settle a dispute or just for fun. Everyone knows the simple hierarchy that forms a path to victory - rocks crush scissors, paper covers a rock, but scissors cut paper. This is a lesson we learn as children, but such simple hierarchies of superiority can govern outcomes in professional life too.  

It’s that time again…no I’m not talking about Halloween; I mean something that can be even scarier – the dreaded Planning process! Ever feel like there’s a “Ghost in the Machine” haunting your users with poor performance and system instability?

Many organizations have a rough experience simply getting their planning solution deployed and operational the first time they go live. They adopt a belief that the system is so fragile that any adjustments like patching software components, risk causing the solution to crumble.

Intro

Transfer pricing is one of the largest drivers of a company’s effective tax rate and is a hot topic due to the significant increase in transfer pricing reporting requirements – especially as BEPS and OECD measures are enacted across the globe. These extensive changes in international cooperation, as well as shorter deadlines, greater frequency, and closer scrutiny of transfer pricing in tax audits, have made transfer pricing the most significant tax issue for multi-national corporations.