Firefighter access exists for a good reason: sometimes someone needs elevated privileges right now to fix something that's broken. The bargain is that afterward, someone reviews what they did with that access. The grant is fast. The review is supposed to be diligent. And that's exactly where the model breaks.
Because reviewing a session properly means reading a log of everything that was done, understanding whether it matched the stated reason for the access, and noticing anything that looks off. Do that for one session and it's a few minutes. Do it for every session across a busy landscape, week after week, and it becomes a backlog nobody clears — so the review degrades into a rubber stamp, or doesn't happen at all.
Unreviewed emergency access is unmonitored privileged access. The whole point of Firefighter is the after-the-fact review — and when that review is too slow to keep up, you've kept the risk and lost the control.
The problem is triage, not reading
Here's the reframe that changes everything: the issue isn't that reviewers can't read a log. It's that they can't read all of them, and they have no way to know which few deserve real attention. Most emergency sessions are exactly what they claim to be — a legitimate fix, done and gone. A small number aren't. The job is finding that small number.
That's a triage problem, and triage is something an agent can do tirelessly. Score every session for risk, check whether the activity lines up with the stated reason, and put the ones that matter in front of a human — with the rest cleared and evidenced.
Not every session deserves the same attention
A session where someone viewed a config table is not the same as one where they touched user administration or system parameters. A sensible review reflects that — and letting an agent sort sessions by risk means human attention lands where it's actually needed:
| Risk band | Roughly what it reflects | What a reviewer does |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Routine activity, aligned with the stated reason | Quick confirm — evidence already attached |
| Medium | Some activity worth a second look | Verify the flagged items |
| High | Sensitive activity, or a mismatch with the reason | Review carefully, ask for documentation |
| Critical | Powerful actions outside the apparent scope | Escalate and investigate |
The reviewer's time stops being spread evenly across everything — most of which is fine — and concentrates on the sessions where something genuinely warrants a human look. That's the difference between a control that keeps up and one that's permanently behind.
Nobody skips Firefighter reviews because they don't care. They skip them because there are too many, all treated equally. Score them, and the review becomes possible again — you're reading the five that matter, not the five hundred that don't.
It reviews; it doesn't rule
An important boundary: the agent's role is to assess and surface, not to adjudicate. It doesn't approve or reject a session on your behalf, and it doesn't change anyone's access. It scores, it explains what it noticed, it tells the reviewer what to look at — and a person makes the call.
The FF Log Review Agent analyzes emergency-access sessions and guides the reviewer. It doesn't confirm, reject, or remediate on its own. The judgment — was this access used appropriately? — stays with the human. The agent just makes that judgment fast, informed, and finally possible to keep up with.
Delivered where reviewers already work — a notification with the risk, the concerns, and what to check — the review stops being a queue they dread and becomes a quick, confident decision.
The bottom line
Emergency access review fails for the most human of reasons: there's too much of it, and no way to tell the routine from the concerning. Scoring every session and routing human attention to the ones that matter turns an ignored control back into a working one. The agent reads what nobody has time to read, and hands the reviewer the short list — while the decision, as it should, stays theirs.
Make Firefighter review something you actually keep up with
See the FF Log Review Agent score every emergency-access session and route your reviewers straight to the ones that matter — with the evidence attached, on your infrastructure.
Frequently asked questions
What is SAP Firefighter log review?
Firefighter (emergency access) grants elevated privileges temporarily so someone can fix an urgent problem. The control is the after-the-fact review of what they did with that access — reading the session log, checking it matched the stated reason, and flagging anything off.
Why don't Firefighter logs actually get reviewed?
Because reviewing one session properly takes minutes, but doing it for every session across a busy landscape, week after week, becomes a backlog nobody clears. The review degrades into a rubber stamp or doesn't happen — and unreviewed emergency access is unmonitored privileged access.
How does AI help review Firefighter sessions?
An AI agent scores every session so reviewers spend their attention on the handful that actually need it — surfacing sessions where activity didn't match the stated reason or looks risky, instead of asking a human to read every log line by line.
Does the AI approve or close Firefighter sessions?
No. The agent reads and scores sessions read-only; the decision stays human. It focuses reviewer attention, it doesn't replace reviewer judgment or sign off on access itself.