IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - July/August 2017 - 17

Figure 1: CICS Unit of Work ID

On top of this risk is the
additional burden of compliance. Many mainframe clients
struggle to produce adequate
compliance reporting for the
variety of existing regulations
such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
(SOX) and PCI DSS. Approved in
2016, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) impacts all organizations
worldwide that house data for
European subjects. There's little
doubt many mainframe systems
include customer or patient data
on European subjects.

Data Protection
Solutions
Developed with deep mainframe
knowledge and tightly integrated
with the mainframe systems, IBM
offers the most robust software
with the necessary knowledge
to perform these functions
with performance in mind. IBM
Guardium* provides a robust set
of capabilities to protect data,
assess and recommend changes
for security, reduce risk and
improve compliance across the
data landscape. Guardium for
the mainframe includes support
for data activity monitoring, data
classification for DB2*, data
encryption for IMS* and DB2,
and more.
Complementing perimeter controls, Guardium data protection is
the closest layer of protection to
the data and therefore plays a critical role in a holistic information

{
The quantity of
breached records
has reached

Figure 2: Policy-Based
Blocking Access

risk and protection strategy. The
data activity monitoring capability in Guardium for IMS, DB2
and data sets provides real-time
monitoring, alerting and analytics
on data access.
Monitoring mainframe data
access provides the raw data and
the analytics to give you unprecedented insights into the who,
what, where and when of data
access and privilege management.
Some benefits of activity monitoring include:

4 billion,
according to the
IBM X-Force
Threat
Intelligence
Report

*

*

Instantly alert security operations teams of privileged user
access outside of designated
timeframes or from approved
IP addresses
Negative SQL reporting for
DB2 to help detect possible
SQL injection attacks or the
presence of an actor that's
fishing for data. Monitoring
negative SQL codes provides
value to the application
developers and database
administrators by uncovering
application problems that

*

*

*

cause additional overhead on
the system.
Satisfy compliance reporting
requirements (e.g., SOX, PCI
DSS, HIPAA, GDPR)
Mitigate risks. For example,
clients who use Guardium
have uncovered operational
risks by analyzing activity,
such as the user of IDs that are
no longer approved for access.
Enhanced data protection,
including blocking access
and quarantining connections while investigation
takes place

The latest release of the z/OS*
monitoring agents (i.e., S-TAPs),
includes enhancements to
improve monitoring functionality. Significant attention has also
been paid to continuous reduction
of cost by reducing CPU overhead.

Performance
Optimizations
An often-heard barrier to the
adoption of a monitoring solution
is the perceived overhead and

About the Findings
Any performance data contained in this article were determined in various
controlled laboratory environments and are for reference purposes only.
Customers should not adapt these performance numbers to their own
environments as system performance standards. The results that may be
obtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. Users of this
document should verify the applicable data for their specific environment.

ibmsystemsmag.com JULY/AUGUST 2017 // 17

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IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - July/August 2017

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