Every organization that’s serious about being in business needs to employ encryption to protect its data. Organizations with a mainframe must not simply assume their data is safe. As such, they should definitely have a mainframe encryption plan in place. Finding an encryption solution that fits in nicely with existing system components, regardless of the platform, can be challenging to say the least. Safeguarding data is the ultimate goal, but with many products, it will take an army to get to that point. The ease of install and the way E-Business Server™ will fit in and play nicely within an existing system may be one of the most impressive features of this tool. E-Business Server is an amazing solution for an organization’s mainframe encryption needs while also being equally productive on 5 other major platforms! More on this later, but ask yourself this: why not get on with encrypting data now rather than “fighting the good fight” with a square peg?
Encryption may be the single most important security component for organizations in today’s world. Encryption is not only absolutely necessary for businesses to protect data in their control, but it’s now a regulatory must to stay in the good graces of the many regulatory compliance agencies. Encrypting data is good but using the very best encryption software available is really what’s called for in 2014 and beyond. If the bad guys are using resources to get at the good guys’ data, it only stands to reason that the good guys fight back with the maximum available firepower. Mainframe encryption is of particular importance mainly because the z/OS mainframe is often tasked with storing and moving the most critical data (ie. credit card numbers).
What is encryption? It’s a process that secures data or messages so that the intended recipient (or person authorized to access the data) is able to view the data while others can’t. In this process, the data is first encrypted and authorized parties are allowed to decrypt the data. A set of “keys” are typically used to allow this to happen. One of the main differences in the different encryption methods is what types of keys are used and how the process occurs in relation with those keys.
PGP encryption has long been recognized as an extremely secure encryption method for the z/OS mainframe and other platforms. Several algorithms are used to encrypt the data and the final security measure lies in the use of “public-key cryptography”. This requires the proper key to decrypt the data and is something that will be explored more when we describe mainframe encryption in depth.
If you’re not sure why your organization needs to find and use the best possible encryption solution, spend 10 minutes on Google looking through recent news articles describing data breaches. These breaches happen to the largest companies in the world and will continue to happen. All it takes is one little weakness in a system and trust me, the bad guys will find it and make you pay! It happened to Target recently on the Black Friday weekend in 2013. Encryption seems to have helped Target keep debit card PIN codes secure (as secure as any 4-digit code can be) while still losing millions of customer’s credit/debit card numbers. This breach happened at physical Target locations across the country; the credit card swipe machines seem to be the culprit. It just goes to show that a data breach can happen anywhere within any organization and being prepared for every possibility is necessary. We’ve provided a few examples of recent data breaches where large amounts of data were lost by large organizations.
Encryption is not something to take lightly and that is especially true when dealing with mainframe encryption. E-Business Server is a powerful tool that can solve your organization’s mainframe encryption problems. With Software Diversified Services (SDS) now in charge of E-Business Server development and support, there is a bright future ahead for this tool and all organizations employing it. Why? SDS has been recognized over its 30 years in business as an industry leader in enterprise-level z/OS mainframe solutions and customer support. E-Business Server is in good hands and improvements to this already impressive tool are ongoing.
If you haven’t already, read McAfee’s E-Business Server Announcement
About MainframeEncryption.com
To build a comprehensive website about “mainframe encryption” would be impossible, well unless I had 5 years and 5 people to help me. That still may not be enough because it’s an extremely difficult subject to ever find an endpoint. There are tentacles far beyond the z/OS mainframe and to do the topic of mainframe encryption justice, one would have to explore those areas.
Because I don’t have half a decade and a team of five to accomplish this, I’ve got to narrow down the mainframe encryption topic to a more manageable one. For the sake of being able to “finish” this website, I’m going to do my best to stay on point with mainframe encryption and fight the urges to stray off topic. For instance, I will have to dive a bit into compliance to highlight the importance of mainframe encryption but I’ll try to pull myself back before this turns into a mainframe compliance site with an encryption paragraph sprinkled in. Lastly, this will not be an overly technical website. Instead of explaining deeply technical topics, we will provide links to other websites that do so.