TEAL-HCM: A Tamper-Evident AI Lineage Framework for Securing Cloud-Based SAP SuccessFactors Integrations

Abstract

Cloud-based SAP SuccessFactors integrations play a critical role in transferring sensitive human capital data across payroll, identity management, reporting, compliance, and downstream enterprise systems. Although conventional audit logs provide transaction visibility, they often remain fragmented across platforms and do not fully prove whether integration records were complete, unmodified, correctly sequenced, and behaviorally consistent throughout the data lifecycle. This study proposes TEAL-HCM, a tamper-evident AI lineage framework designed to strengthen the security, traceability, and audit reliability of SAP SuccessFactors integration environments. The framework combines canonical event modeling, SHA-256 based hash-chain verification, Merkle checkpointing, lineage graph reconstruction, and machine learning driven anomaly detection to identify payload alteration, event deletion, replay activity, timestamp manipulation, unauthorized field changes, schema drift, and abnormal API behavior. A controlled enterprise-scale evaluation modeled on SAP SuccessFactors integration patterns is used to compare TEAL-HCM against traditional audit logging, rule-based SIEM monitoring, hash-chain-only verification, and machine-learning-only detection. The results indicate that the proposed framework improves tamper detection accuracy, anomaly detection performance, lineage completeness, audit reconstruction efficiency, and compliance evidence readiness while maintaining acceptable processing and storage overhead. By connecting cryptographic integrity assurance with behavior-aware anomaly detection, this study argues that secure HR integration governance should move beyond passive log collection toward verifiable, explainable, and risk-prioritized data lineage. The proposed framework contributes a scalable approach for organizations seeking to protect high-risk HR data flows, improve audit preparedness, and build stronger trust in cloud-based SAP SuccessFactors integration ecosystems.