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Carol discusses the dangers of allowing IT projects outside of the IT team and the problems doing so can present to your organization.

carol woodburyWritten by Carol Woodbury

I've heard them called by several terms"rogue IT", "super users," and most commonly, "shadow IT"but essentially it's those users who perform duties that would normally be done by traditional IT staff…but these workers don't work for IT. Often, these workers have a background in IT, having moved from a position in IT to a position on the business side of the organization. They think that since they know how to perform these tasks (writing queries, replicating databases, developing complex spreadsheets, etc.), they might as well do the work. No harm, right?

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Even Power Systems can't provide the security you need right out of the box. Compliance Assessment 3.0 helps you identify shortcomings and safeguard your system.

robin tatamWritten by Robin Tatam

Security and compliance adherence has elevated in criticality over the past few years and has now taken its rightful place as a primary IT initiative, alongside virtualization and disaster preparedness. The necessity for better data protection has landed front-and-center in the public eye following some of the largest data breaches on record, including the highly publicized Target retail breach. This was the first of the national "big box" retailers to be hit with such a public and devastating attack. These stories make headlines, but thousands of lesser-publicized breaches occur every year. The threat landscape has rapidly evolved from socially and politically motivated disruptions to highly sophisticated attacks orchestrated by criminals seeking financial gain, and competitors and governments engaged in industrial and international espionage.

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Special authorities give users the access they need quickly and easily, but they're hard to take away once granted. You need to understand what you're assigning someone. Special authorities are more serious than you might have thought.

steve pitcherWritten by Steve Pitcher

With great power comes great responsibility.

 

My company is about to go on a major ERP overhaul. That's right. We've got forty plus years of a mostly home-grown solution with pieces and parts bolted on over time. Do we have people who have too much authority given their job role? Yes. Are certain objects less secure than they could be? Yes. Like any shop, we have a couple of critical applications that "might break" if the authority is changed. We also have a couple of users who "might" not be able to do their jobs if their authority is restricted. With a new solution on the horizon, it's a good time to look at what we have from a security point of view.

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The key to success is planning.

carol woodburyWritten by Carol Woodbury

Since I live in Seattle, it's only fitting that I discuss the preparations you need to make prior to moving to the cloud. One requirement for living in Seattle is to be prepared for changing weather. It may be bright and sunny, and an hour later be overcast and raining. Native Seattleites know to carry an extra fleece and Gore-Tex rain jacketin other words, we're prepared. In terms of moving part of your business to the cloud, you must also be prepared. This article discusses preparations you need to make prior to moving to the cloud.

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In her return to her Security Patrol post, Carol Woodbury discusses the ways you can prepare for the unthinkable.

carol woodburyWritten by Carol Woodbury

I'd like you to imagine the unthinkablethat your organization's been hacked. Please entertain that thought with me for a few minutes. Let's pretend that you've just been notified that the personal data of your organization's customers has been posted to an underground website where it's up for sale. In addition to fighting back a severe case of nausea, what do you do? You'd reach for the printed copy of your organization's incident response plan, right? What do you mean there is no such document? Are you telling me that you have never thought through this scenario and documented the steps to take in the case your organization experiences a breach?

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Discover the euphoria of self-service password reset.

robin tatamWritten by Robin Tatam

Since the dawn of the technological age, stories have abounded of users writing passwords on Post-It notes and in logbooks. That's because good passwords are hard to devise and even harder to remember. When we concoct one, we hang on to it. What's worse, we use the same username and password everywhere. Many experts believe passwords represent one of the greatest security vulnerabilities; however, they remain a necessary evil. The reality is that passwords will be around for the foreseeable future. And for every password that exists, there's a user who will forget it.

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This article is an excerpt from IBM Mainframe Security: Beyond the Basics.

dinesh dattaniWritten by Dinesh D. Dattani

"Security Best Practices, Part 1" presented several best practices for IBM mainframe security, including implementing role-based security, de-cluttering your security database, handling employee transitions appropriately, and identifying your important data. In this article, we continue the discussion with a look at some additional best practices for IBM mainframe security.

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This article is an excerpt from IBM Mainframe Security: Beyond the Basics  (MC Press, 2013).

dinesh dattaniWritten by Dinesh D. Dattani

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

—George Orwell

Mainframe security has been around for quite some time. Over the years, installations have realized that some practices, if implemented, will pay security dividends in the long run. In fact, it can be argued that not establishing best practices and not following them is detrimental to overall security and often results in increased security administration costs.

With this in mind, this article presents some of the best practices for IBM mainframe security.

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