Resources

Guide

Controlling SSH for Security and Compliance

SSH is nearly ubiquitous in today’s enterprises, and is the predominant tool for managing unix and linux servers, and the applications and data that they host. Poor practices around the deployment and management of the SSH infrastructure could easily leave your enterprise vulnerable to a breach. Are you in control? SSH, Secure Shell protocol, is now nineteen years old and broadly deployed across...
Article

Sudo or SuDon't: Manage Your Privileged Command Execution and Sudo Policies

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.
Article

Managing IT Access Privileges

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 keys” (or smart ID badges) that can open many-toall of the locks in the...
Article

Solving Healthcare Security Concerns

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 fraud, there is also...
Article

New Approaches to the SWIFT and PCI-DSS Framework

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 was this unfortunate incident three years ago (no, you don’t want to hear...
Article

Pros and Cons for Puppet's Configuration Management & Security

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 bedding down Puppet in their server/VM infrastructure, and are looking...
Blog

How “Smash and Grab” Compromises IBM i

During an audit a few years ago, I revealed to the client’s security team that corporate payroll information on every employee, including the CEO, was being archived in an output queue (called PAYROLL) for weeks at a time. Due to poor configuration, this information was accessible to every employee.
Article

The Modern Alternative to Authority Adoption

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?
On-Demand Webinar

An Introduction to PCI Compliance on IBM Power Systems

Complying with the PCI standard is a normal part of doing business in today’s credit-centric world. But, PCI applies to multiple platforms. The challenge becomes how to map the general PCI requirements to a specific platform, such as IBM i. And, more importantly, how can you maintain—and prove—compliance?
Guide

Download “Identity & Access Management for IBM i”

Insiders are responsible for 34 percent of data breaches—and insiders are also the most difficult threat to control control on IBM i. You can't lock them out completely because your IBM i users need at least some level of access to do their jobs. So, how do you ensure users have only the access they need without overburdening IT with manual processes that distract from other critical projects? We...
Blog

IT Security Compliance 101

In this compliance 101 primer, we'll look at three high-profile breaches from the past year, each of which shows what can go wrong when data oversight isn't up to snuff. Along the way, we'll discuss some basic fixes that can help shore up network defenses.
Guide

Effective Log Management

IBM’s customers are turning to Power VM virtualization to consolidate multiple workloads onto fewer systems increasing server utilization and reducing cost. However a virtualized server landscape on several different IBM platforms (IBM Power Systems™, IBM System x®, and IBM BladeCenter®) may reduce hardware complexity but this puts a strain on supporting the entire lifecycle of analysis...
Guide

13 Tips to Write Secure Applications and Boost IBM i Security

Barely a day passes without new headlines reporting another cyber attack, policy violation, or data breach. Secretly, we breathe a sigh of relief that it happened to someone else, but most of us know that we’ll all eventually feel the impact in some capacity.