The fol­low­ing Util­i­ty Voice was authored by Marc Rosson, Enter­prise Archi­tect at Sno­homish Coun­ty PUD.

Team,

While we’d all like to assume that our sys­tems are safe and secure, this is not guar­an­teed — nor does enter­prise-grade secu­ri­ty hap­pen by acci­dent. It takes a vil­lage of busi­ness and IT users to remain con­stant­ly aware of who has access to our busi­ness sys­tems and how we keep them secure, mak­ing secu­ri­ty as seam­less as pos­si­ble for autho­rized users while keep­ing every­one else out. 

We see news head­lines every week about sys­tems that went unpatched and there­fore were exposed to exploita­tion. And as we move our sys­tems to Cloud ERP, it’s vital that we all under­stand the shared respon­si­bil­i­ty secu­ri­ty mod­el that the SAP Cloud ERP secu­ri­ty brings to the table — every­thing from inter­nal staff not shar­ing pass­words to very tech­ni­cal con­fig­u­ra­tions that must be done by our inter­nal util­i­ty staff as well as our SAP Cloud ERP Sup­port Team. 

Hear From the Experts 

On Decem­ber 15^th, Erin Hugh­es and her team will present to our com­mu­ni­ty on SAP Pri­vate Cloud secu­ri­ty. Erin is cur­rent­ly the Head of Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and Com­pli­ance Advi­so­ry for the Amer­i­c­as at SAP and has a team of pro­fes­sion­als that work across indus­tries and cloud oper­a­tions to ensure com­pli­ance and help all make every day unevent­ful as it relates to cybersecurity. 

SAP pro­vides ser­vices and prod­ucts that are auto­mat­i­cal­ly includ­ed as part of their cloud solu­tions, and it also offers addi­tion­al ser­vices and prod­ucts that are avail­able for util­i­ties which seek to enhance their secu­ri­ty pos­ture. Bot­tom line, secu­ri­ty is a team effort, and it takes both the util­i­ty staff and SAP to make the sys­tem secure. 

Please join us on this offi­cial SAP webi­nar — where we will talk about the solu­tions both includ­ed and option­al — on Decem­ber 15^th, from 2 – 3 p.m. EST, either via this Teams link or by reach­ing out to me at Marc@utility.community for an invite.

Turn Expe­ri­ence Into Guidance 

When we share what works and what isn’t work­ing in our tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes, we all learn togeth­er and become a stronger com­mu­ni­ty. ASUG wel­comes pro­pos­als for the 2026 SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do — to be held May 11 – 13 — with sub­mis­sions open through Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 2^nd. If your team has a les­son oth­ers can use, we would like to hear it. 

There are sev­er­al ways to par­tic­i­pate. You can tell a cus­tomer sto­ry focused on the prob­lem, the approach, what you learned, and the out­comes. You can also host an inter­ac­tive dis­cus­sion where peers com­pare notes and solu­tions, or you can join SAP-led for­mats that help cus­tomers under­stand prod­ucts and strat­e­gy in prac­ti­cal terms. 

If you plan to sub­mit, use the pro­pos­al link to cre­ate the event account and com­plete the required fields. You may send more than one idea before the dead­line. We val­ue the exper­tise you bring to this com­mu­ni­ty and are eager to hear what you have to share.

To get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty.