TechChannel Rising Star recipient, Megan Olson took part in a roundtable discussion to share her experience as a newcomer to the IBM i industry.

To cope with system issues, you want easy yet comprehensive solutions that handle your performance, messaging, and remote management needs, but what you really need are integrated solutions for universal control. See where Robot Monitor fits in.

When you apply rules to system events, automation software like Robot Console works like the autopilot on a boat or plane—it steers the system through the night or the weekend while you rest.

PCI DSS now includes requirements for strong encryption of cardholder data. Learn how key management is an essential element of preventing unauthorized data access.

As you consider taking your IBM i to the cloud, cybersecurity will no doubt top your list of concerns. And for good reason. It’s important to remember that the cloud is kind of a lie. Your sensitive data is simply being sent to someone else’s server, and that server has a physical location somewhere. Just like on-prem cybersecurity, IBM i cloud security can be divided into two parts: Regulatory...

Typically, there are two main issues with monitoring a system manually: having to go out deliberately (and repeatedly) and check to see if something has happened; and the fact that you are most likely looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack of logged events.

Robot Console leverages the power of Fortra' dashboards containing browser access! Mobile-friendly dashboards allow you to combine key message summary and resource status data into a single, intuitive view. Read on to learn more.

When it comes to security on IBM Power Servers running IBM i, a common challenge for many organizations is the number of users with too much power. These users can potentially circumvent application controls, override security restrictions for themselves and others, change critical server configuration settings, and even cover their tracks while they do it.

While everyone likes to feel special, we need to be more selective when it comes to data access. As we discussed last month, many users have privileges far beyond their business requirements and simply need to have their access reduced to more reasonable levels.

Ask any security professional which area of IBM i security is most often ignored and chances are that the unanimous response is a chorus of “the Integrated File System.” Although it’s been around since V3R1, the Integrated File System, or IFS, remains a shrouded mystery that represents significant risk to many IBM i organizations.

You have the afternoon off—but not the responsibility of monitoring your system for issues. This includes responding to application and system messages as they occur on your production IBM i jobs. You don’t want to carry your laptop around just in case you need to VPN back to answer a message that is waiting on your month-end process. What option do you have?

Let’s face it; system administration remains a largely thankless task. From scheduling jobs to balancing workloads to answering messages in QSYSOPR, administrators and operators work diligently behind the scenes to ensure that IBM i servers are available to run mission-critical applications.

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.