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While IBM i was not the direct target, Carol discusses lessons the IBM i community can learn from the SolarWinds attack.

By Carol Woodbury

The full extent of the SolarWinds attack continues to unfold, but suffice to say that the breadth and the lengths to which the perpetrators went are, to put it mildly, stunning. I’m not going to describe the attack, but here are several websites that describe the details of the attack, and the SecurityWeek link is kept up-to-date as more details become available:

While I haven’t heard of any IBM i systems being affected, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that an IBM i was breached as a side effect of this attack. Regardless, this type of attack should make all of us sit up and take notice and determine if we have the practices in place to fend off this type of attack if one should hit our organization.

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Carol provides her suggestions for doing things differently in 2021.

By Carol Woodbury

With the new year upon us, resolutions are being made. I’m not really a resolution person, but every year I do try to look forward and see if there’s something that I could to do differently. You know that old adage: to do something the same way over and over and expect different results is the definition of insanity. I think we’ve had enough insanity for one year, so let’s take a look at five actions I’d like to see IBM i administrators adopt this year and why.

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Everyone will be thankful when we can say goodbye to 2020! And everyone can list the awful events that have occurred this year. But not everything about 2020 was bad. In this article, Carol finds the good in 2020.

By Carol Woodbury

One of the people I follow on Instagram started to post the things she was thankful for. They were simple things: her dog, a beautiful sunset, money to buy groceries. These posts awoke me to the fact that I needed to start paying better attention to the things around me, specifically the things/situations/people I needed to be thankful for. This article is only a partial list of the things that I’m thankful for. I’m hoping that it will inspire you to also be thankful as we bid good riddance to 2020.

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Malicious programs can bring entire businesses to their knees—and IBM i shops are not immune.

By HelpSystems

Editor's note: This article introduces the April 2021 Webinar: Security Bulletin: Malware Infection Discovered on IBM i Server!, which is On-Demand and available to download and view from the MC Webcast Center.

Imagine what would happen to your organization if users couldn’t process orders, accept payments, access customer lists, or any number of day-to-day activities.

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To make informed security decisions that move your company forward, you must first determine the current security settings.

By Carol Woodbury

Perhaps you’re new to IBM i security or security has been neglected for awhile and needs a reboot. In this article, I’ll explore the IBM i security features available to you and how I would use them to make decisions on how to proceed.

My business partner, John Vanderwall, and I have just started our own business again. To launch DXR Security, we needed to investigate the current business landscape and the tools available to determine how best to establish our new business (e.g., the current banking and accounting software, business partners with similar objectives, etc.). Basically, we had to do a reboot on the whole business startup process. Fortunately, we did this once before, when we started SkyView Partners, so we knew what to look for, but for entrepreneurs just starting out, the way would not be as obvious and much more research would be required.

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Carol explores the pros and cons of using authorization lists to secure IBM i objects.

By Carol Woodbury

Authorization lists (Autls) are a tool provided by the operating system that allows you to simplify the management of authorities on IBM i objects. But many organizations aren’t leveraging them. By fully explaining both the benefits and pain points of authorization lists, I’m hoping to convince more organizations to take advantage of them.

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While it’s easy enough to know whether my own connection to IBM i is secure—that is, encrypted—how can I tell whether all connections are encrypted?

By Carol Woodbury

Some organizations have a requirement that all connections to their IBM i be encrypted. I applaud those organizations and encourage everyone to adopt this practice. Most organizations encrypt outbound connections, but not everyone encrypts internal traffic. Encrypting all communication (including internal) ensures that no passwords or data are flowing anywhere in cleartext.

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The short answer to that question is no, but there are at least two scenarios where it makes more sense to use the Authority Collection feature added in V7R3 than the audit journal. Read on for details!

By Carol Woodbury

During a class I was teaching, someone asked if they should stop auditing the commands a user was running and enable Authority Collection to log users’ activity instead. Since her need was to log users’ activity to satisfy audit/compliance requirements, the answer to her question was a resounding no. That made me wonder if others have similar questions about replacing the operating system’s auditing features with the Authority Collection features. While there are two instances where I think you’ll want to use Authority Collection rather than the audit journal, there are no scenarios that justify reducing what you’ve currently configured for auditing.

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