Automating Security and Compliance Testing for Workday Releases

Workday empowers organizations to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and supports business growth. As more companies embrace digital transformation, regulatory scrutiny around data security has increased. Non-compliance now carries significant consequences.

Given that most organizations customize their Workday HCM instance to meet unique business requirements, HR and IT teams face increasing challenges in ensuring that security configurations remain effective after Workday updates and that security policies are consistently enforced.

In this blog, we’ll explore how security works in Workday, why testing security configurations is essential, the benefits of automating this process, and how Opkey can help streamline your Workday security and compliance testing.

What are Workday Security Roles?

In Workday, security roles are essential components that help organizations manage and control who can access and perform specific actions within the system. These roles are crucial for ensuring data privacy, regulatory compliance, and proper system governance.

Key Aspects of Workday Security Roles:

Role-Based Access: Security roles define what each user can see and do in Workday based on their job position, not on an individual basis. This ensures consistency and simplifies access management as employees move through different roles.

Data Protection & Compliance: These roles align with data protection practices (like GDPR), helping administrators control and monitor the flow of data in and out of the system. For example, roles determine who can initiate processes, approve cross-border data transfers, or update sensitive information.

Functional Control: They also regulate access to reports, dashboards, and transactions—ensuring that employees only access information necessary for their job responsibilities.

Continuous Monitoring: With clearly defined roles, administrators can continuously audit and monitor system activity, improving overall security and accountability.

Example: Payroll Administrator Security Role

The Payroll Administrator security role in Workday is designed to ensure that payroll-related processes and data are properly managed, while maintaining strict access controls to protect sensitive employee information.

The Payroll Administrator can:

• Initiate, manage, and finalize payroll runs for the organization.

• Access employee compensation details, including salaries, bonuses, deductions, and benefits.

• Generate and review payroll summaries, tax reports, and audit logs for accuracy and compliance.

• Verify that payroll processing complies with company policies and local labor/tax laws.

However, these tasks would fall outside the Payroll Administrator role’s capabilities:

• Accessing HR functions like recruiting, performance management, or organizational development unless specifically assigned.

• Approving or initiating non-payroll-related processes unless other roles are assigned (e.g., HR Partner or Manager).

What is Workday Security Configuration Testing?

Workday Security Configuration defines what data your users can access when they log in and what business processes they can initiate or approve/reject. This is done to ensure that tenant data is protected and visible to authenticated users only. Simply put, testing Workday’s security configuration means testing every user and role (respectively) against the pre-assigned permissions.

Learn more: A Practical Guide to Workday Testing

Why Workday Security Configuration Testing Is Essential Following Major Updates

Workday receives major updates twice a year, introducing new features, enhancements, and changes that may affect security permissions, roles, and access levels. After such updates, testing security configurations becomes essential for the following reasons:

Prevent Unauthorized Access: Post Workday updates changes can unintentionally alter access permissions. Without proper testing, users might gain access to confidential information or be blocked from critical tasks. Security testing ensures that only authorized users have access to sensitive data.

Protect Against Compliance Risks: Workday manages highly sensitive employee data subject to regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2. A misconfiguration post-update could lead to non-compliance, inviting legal penalties and reputational damage. Testing validates that audit trails, access controls, and security policies are still intact.

Validate Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC): Workday security roles (e.g., Payroll Administrator, HR Partner) are configured based on employee positions. Updates may impact how these roles interact with new features. Testing ensures that RBAC policies are still correctly applied after updates.

Detect Integration Breakages: Security configurations often play a role in external integrations (e.g., Oracle, Salesforce). Updates in Workday may disrupt these connections or cause data sync issues. Testing helps confirm that integration of permissions and data flows remains secure and uninterrupted.

Challenges in Workday Security Configuration Testing

• Manual testing Workday Security configurations can become labor-intensive and time-consuming.  

• Manually testing all users (across all Security Groups) against a baseline can be an overwhelming, often frustrating task.  

• Manual testing cannot ensure adequate test coverage because of the complications involved (regarding processes and data transactions).

Opkey - Your Unfair Advantage for Unbeatable Workday Test Automation 

Opkey is leading the agentic AI revolution in the ERP space. Built on years of real-world ERP expertise, our ERP Lifecycle Optimization Platform is the first of its kind to maximize the power of agentic AI. Leveraging an ERP-specific small language model, combined with advanced process mining, observability, intelligent web automation, and a “human in the loop” methodology, we’ve developed a full digital workforce of specialized agentic AI agents. 

As a Workday Certified Test Automation Partner, Opkey empowers enterprises with Agentic AI-driven automation to streamline Workday update testing and drive long-term ROI. Here’s how:

AI-Powered Impact Analysis: Opkey’s AI analyzes Workday release notes and configuration changes to identify which policies or processes are impacted (e.g., payroll calculations, security roles). Opkey's AI flags high-risk areas (e.g., misconfigured benefits eligibility rules) and triggers targeted tests to prevent policy violations.  

Automated Configuration Validation: Opkey’s pre-built library of test cases covers HCM, Payroll, Benefits, and Financials. These tests validate configurations against predefined policies (e.g., access controls, payroll rules, compliance standards). Opkey's AI agents run automated tests after every Workday update or configuration change, ensuring policies are enforced in real time.  

Self-Healing Configuration Scripts: When policy deviations (e.g., incorrect security role assignments) are detected, Opkey’s AI autonomously updates configurations or suggests fixes, reducing manual intervention by 80%. Self-healing scripts adapt to UI or workflow changes, ensuring policy checks remain accurate across Workday updates.  

End-to-End Integration Testing: Opkey supports testing configurations across 150+ integrated applications (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Salesforce) to ensure policies like data privacy or financial controls are maintained end-to-end. Opkey automatically verifies that Workday APIs and integrations adhere to security and data governance policies. Learn more: Workday Integration Testing with Opkey