Treat stored credentials as governed identity artifacts, not convenience settings. Assign an owner, define the business purpose, set rotation and revocation rules, and require the secret to be removable when the user, workload, or project ends. If a credential cannot be traced to a current need, it should not remain in the client store.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Stored SAP HANA credentials inside client applications are not just configuration details. They are standing access paths into business data, and they often sit outside normal identity lifecycle controls. That makes them easy to overlook during application changes, user exits, and emergency fixes. Governance needs to treat them as managed identity artifacts, with ownership, purpose, and expiry, consistent with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 emphasis on asset and access governance.
The common failure is not that teams never create a credential policy. It is that the credential becomes embedded in a client, then survives long after the original user, service, or project has changed. That creates hidden privilege, breaks accountability, and complicates incident response because no one can quickly answer who can still use the secret, why it exists, or how to revoke it without breaking production.
For identity-heavy environments, the issue also overlaps with non-human identity control. A stored SAP HANA credential is effectively a non-human identity in secret form, even if the application team never labels it that way. The OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 is useful here because it frames the operational risk around unmanaged credentials, poor lifecycle control, and weak ownership. In practice, many security teams encounter credential sprawl only after a client application has been copied, retired, or repurposed without a corresponding secret review.
How It Works in Practice
Good governance starts by mapping each stored credential to a named owner, a business service, and a specific technical purpose. That record should explain where the credential lives, which client application uses it, what HANA object or account it reaches, and which conditions require rotation or revocation. If the credential supports automation, the team should document the workload identity behind it and decide whether the secret can be replaced with a stronger trust pattern. In some environments, current guidance suggests aligning secret governance with broader identity controls rather than managing it as an isolated application task.
Operationally, teams should build a repeatable review cycle that checks for:
- unused or stale credentials in application code, config files, or deployment variables
- shared credentials across multiple clients or environments
- secrets that cannot be rotated without manual application changes
- credentials that still grant access after a user, vendor, or project has ended
- missing evidence of approval, purpose, or last validation date
That review is stronger when tied to access control and identity assurance practices. The NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines help teams distinguish human authentication strength from workload credential governance, while NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls offers control language for credential management, least privilege, and revocation discipline. The practical goal is simple: the secret should be removable without ambiguity, and revocation should not depend on tribal knowledge. These controls tend to break down when SAP HANA credentials are hardcoded into legacy desktop clients because rotation then requires coordinated application redeployment across multiple unsupported versions.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter credential governance often increases release overhead, requiring organisations to balance faster delivery against stronger lifecycle control. That tradeoff becomes sharper in legacy SAP landscapes, where client applications may not support external secret stores, short-lived tokens, or clean separation between user and system access.
Best practice is evolving for these edge cases. Some teams still rely on shared technical accounts for compatibility, but that should be treated as a temporary exception, not a stable operating model. Where shared access cannot be eliminated yet, the exception should be documented, time-bound, and reviewed more frequently than normal production credentials. The governance question is not whether the credential is convenient; it is whether the organisation can defend why it remains necessary.
Another common edge case is vendor-managed or third-party client software. In those situations, the business owner should still define the approval path, rotation expectations, and removal process, even if the vendor controls the implementation details. If the application cannot support revocation without service loss, that limitation should be escalated as a risk rather than accepted silently. For teams handling regulated or sensitive workloads, the right answer may be to redesign the integration rather than keep extending the life of a fragile secret model.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-63 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Stored credentials are access mechanisms that need ownership and governance. |
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | Client-stored SAP HANA secrets behave like unmanaged non-human identities. | |
| NIST SP 800-63 | AAL | Helps separate human authentication from workload secret governance. |
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | IA-5 | Covers authenticator management, including issuance, rotation, and revocation. |
Apply authenticator lifecycle controls to stored credentials and require timely rotation and disablement.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on September 2, 2026.
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