Mainframe Basics for Security Professionals: Getting Started With RACF

Leverage Your Security Expertise in IBM^® System z™ Mainframe Environments

For over 40 years, the IBM mainframe has been the backbone of the world’s largest enterprises. If you’re coming to the IBM System z mainframe platform from UNIX ^® , Linux ^® , or Windows ^® , you need practical guidance on leveraging its unique security capabilities. Now, IBM experts have written the first authoritative book on mainframe security specifically designed to build on your experience in other environments.

Even if you’ve never logged onto a mainframe before, this book will teach you how to run today’s z/OS ^® operating system command line and ISPF toolset and use them to efficiently perform every significant security administration task. Don’t have a mainframe available for practice? The book contains step-by-step videos walking you through dozens of key techniques. Simply log in and register your book at www.ibmpressbooks.com/register to gain access to these videos.

The authors illuminate the mainframe’s security model and call special attention to z/OS security techniques that differ from UNIX, Linux, and Windows. They thoroughly introduce IBM’s powerful Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) security subsystem and demonstrate how mainframe security integrates into your enterprise-wide IT security infrastructure. If you’re an experienced system administrator or security professional, there’s no faster way to extend your expertise into “big iron” environments.

Coverage includes

• Mainframe basics: logging on, allocating and editing data sets, running JCL jobs, using UNIX System Services, and accessing documentation
• Creating, modifying, and deleting users and groups
• Protecting data sets, UNIX file system files, databases, transactions, and other resources
• Manipulating profiles and managing permissions
• Configuring the mainframe to log security events, filter them appropriately, and create usable reports
• Using auditing tools to capture static configuration data and dynamic events, identify weaknesses, and remedy them
• Creating limited-authority administrators: how, when, and why

Ori Pomerantz has been securing computer networks--and teaching other people to do so--since 1995. Since joining IBM in 2003, he has written classes on several Tivoli^® security products, including IBM Tivoli zSecure.

Barbara Vander Weele, a software engineer at IBM, has developed and presented education material on provisioning, security, storage, and business technologies for IBM Worldwide Education.

Mark Nelson, Senior Software Engineer at IBM, is a twenty-year veteran of the RACF design team and a frequent speaker on RACF and z/OS security-related topics.

Tim Hahn, IBM Distinguished Engineer, has been with IBM for seventeen years. He is Chief Architect for Secure Systems and Networks within the IBM Software Group Tivoli organization.