Data Security in SAP Analytics Cloud

In SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), the data models are accessible to all users by default. In order to provide data security, SAC has various options under ‘Access and Privacy’ of ‘Model Preferences’. In this blog, we will go over the different options available to restrict access to the data models.

Data Security at the Model Level

By enabling model data privacy, you can restrict user access to the model. Only the owner and users with roles that are granted access can access data from the model.

Please note that ‘Model Data Privacy’ can only be enabled in imported/acquired models.

Then in the ‘Access and Privacy’ tab under Data Access enable ‘Model Data Privacy’ option.

For users who do not have access to the model, the error ‘You have no authorization to the model’ is displayed as shown below.

Data Access Control in Dimensions

Apart from restricting the entire model, you can also restrict access to specific dimensions from the ‘Model Preferences’ popup. Please note that ‘Data Access Control in Dimensions’ can only be enabled for imported/acquired models. Once restricted, the user with restricted access will only be able to see the dimensions to which the user has access to. All the other dimensions will not be visible.

Data Access Control to Members of a Dimension

In order to allow only partial access to the data in the dimension for certain users, you would need to customize the data access control further.

Select the dimension name and then switch to grid mode.

Here you will see two columns, ‘Read’ and ‘Write’. You can select a cell and add users for ‘Read’ and ‘Write’ columns.

Now after specifying the users, save the model. Only these users will have rights to Read/Write data for the selected dimension.

Restricted Export to CSV

All users can export the models to a CSV file, by default. To restrict users from exporting data to a CSV file, you would need to enable the option ‘Restricted Export’ in the ‘Model Preferences’ popup. Unlike the above-discussed options, you can restrict the export even for LIVE models.