Here are some recommendations for managing users on IBM Power Systems when time is of the essence.

Editor's Note: This article is an extract of the white paper "Five Shortcuts to Sensible Operational Security" available free from the MC White Paper Center.

The last 10 years have seen drastic changes in the importance and relevance of security and audit issues. I am sure we all recall at least one incident in which a software or hardware product had been rebadged or maybe just remarketed for whatever that year's hot security subject was. Many vendors were claiming to provide the only path to total compliance with the security standards of the day, and if you did not buy their products, you would find yourself in jail.

We can look back at that period and smile, knowing that organizations did benefit from some of the changes enforced at that time, but hopefully the only example of our mug shot that the world has seen is the one we now use for LinkedIn and Facebook. (Some of those are truly criminal; I know I stand guilty as charged).

As I travel to data centers around the globe, I find it interesting to reflect on those days and compare that to the reality of data security practices today. The most critical difference now is the focus on the "real world" that we all work in rather than some standardized, perfect world approach to security in the data center. For the purposes of this article, we are focusing on IBM Power Systems and IBM i (iSeries) environments in particular.

The previous approach to security often involved one of the following:

• The need to read hundreds of audit trails with thousands of pages of entries

• The need to rewrite navigational menus to reflect the organization's business

• The need to contact your software provider and force them to make their security fit your business model

These examples above are all sensible on paper and maybe even easy to justify, but now that we have all had a chance to reflect, perhaps they were overkill. I would like to introduce a more focused, realistic approach to addressing security concerns using modern tools for user authority challenges and recommendations for event auditing. First, we will cover the old ways and identify the things that worked and the things that didn't.

Let me put all my cards on the table at this point. I am a fully fledged member of Security Professionals Anonymous, and I admit that I have recommended, and even installed, many of those old solutions for my clients. However, as time progressed, it was blatantly obvious that most organizations I spoke to did not understand my passion for securing their systems. Even if they did, they were often unable to implement to the level of detail which was recommended.

Want to learn more? Download the complete white paper "Five Shortcuts to Sensible Operational Security" from the MC White Paper Center.

as/400, os/400, iseries, system i, i5/os, ibm i, power systems, 6.1, 7.1, V7, V6R1

Martin Norman has worked for more than 25 years in the IT industry, specializing in Systems and Security Management of the IBM System i platforms. Martin has performed consultancy and implementations in the UK and Central Europe, and for the last 10 years in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, with particular focus on Fortune 100 and 500 organizations.

 

Martin is Technical Support Manager at Halcyon Software Inc., based in Philadelphia, where he focuses on helping IBM Power Systems users get the optimum performance from their IT business environment and the maximum efficiency and ROI for their operations.

 

A regular speaker at IBM events, such as COMMON and within the LUG network, he is also a contributor to a number of U.S. IT publications.