Image “Some cloud vendors tout that systems deployed within their framework require little or no administration: You create an image with the software and applications that you want it to provide services for, spin it up in a management console, and Voila! you have an entirely new system online; with minimal cost, no hassle, little...

Media Image Text In the early 1990s the Open Software Foundation formed a committee to select and standardize a new Management Platform Toolset for and from the UNIX ecosystem....

Despite the server’s incredible security infrastructure, auditing remains primarily a thankless, manual chore. And, let’s face it, any task that’s thankless and manual probably won’t get done.

A user’s ability to execute commands in a green-screen environment is controlled by the limit capabilities (LMTCPB) parameter on their profile. Although without exit programs to extend IBM i security functions, even limited capability users could invoke commands through network interfaces such as FTP.

Introduced by IBM to support TCP/IP services, a profile swap allows a job to change midstream and run under a different profile than the one that started it.

Does this sound familiar? You recently experienced an “unplanned outage” after an administrator inadvertently issued a PWRDWNSYS command while mentoring a new operator.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) helps ensure that your critical and sensitive data is viewed and changed only by authorized personnel through approved channels. Candidates for FIM include application files containing sensitive data, such as personnel or financial data, and server configuration files.

System admins need root level authority at all times, system operations staff needs periodic database and application account authority, and security admins needing to protect the environment are some of the few of the challenges of managing privilege in the enterprise server infrastructure. Read this article to learn more about Sudo alternatives.

Image THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM Secure, private, effective use of computers by a company (including hosted, cloud and other services as well as the company’s own systems) relies on managing access privileges. The problem isn’t unique to computers. Office buildings, hotels, apartments and college dorms, for example, typically have “master...

According to a recent KPMG report, four-fifths of executives at healthcare providers and payers say their information technology has been compromised by cyberattacks. That same report presents how the increased risk to healthcare organizations relates to the richness and uniqueness of the information that health plans, doctors and hospitals handle. Apart from typical financial...

Image THE WORLD OF COMPLIANCE At the official start of summertime 2016 in Britain we are starting to consume the labour of last autumn, five gallons of alcoholic homemade cider (yum!) made from eight apple varieties grown in mine and my neighbors’ gardens. I’m very VERY careful sterilizing glassware, containers, and buckets: there...

Image THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY I was at the Red Hat Summit in Boston at the end of June. We had a lot of activity at our exhibitor stand, and a lot of discussions being passed on to me by our sales team I continued to have the same conversation again and again over the three days. This seems to be the year people have finished...

There are several considerations with authority adoption. Each is important but can usually be accommodated. But what is the effect if the program owner has the same or less privileges than the user that called the program?

Simple penetration tests help determine if a policy breach will be prevented and ensure that interested parties receive alert notifications. Failed tests might be indicative of a problem with product activation, or an incorrect or outdated Exit Point Manager IBM i rule set.

In recent years, regulatory initiatives like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI, and GLBA have placed increased emphasis on the need to monitor and secure sensitive information. For example, The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard dictates one of the most stringent requirements of all—logs must be reviewed daily, and a minimum of three months of logs must be available for analysis.