SecureZIP for iSeries Now Available from PKWARE

After being announced nearly a year ago and undergoing extended development and beta test periods, SecureZIP for iSeries and zSeries are now available, the product’s developer, PKWARE, announced last week. SecureZIP for iSeries and zSeries combine PKWARE’s traditional PKZIP file compression with PKI certificate or password-protected file encryption capabilities, which the company expects to be warmly accepted by large enterprises looking to comply with new regulations mandating the safe handling of data.

PKWARE has been in the file compression business since the company’s founder, Phil Katz, released the first open source PKZIP product in 1986. Since 2003, the Milwaukee company has been working to augment its success in compression with new encryption and security capabilities, while maintaining the same level of cross-platform usability that made the ZIP standard a ubiquitous landmark of the networked age.

PKWARE’s solution to the problem of keeping data secure while in transit is SecureZIP. This software is built on top of the relatively new PKZIP Server product (which has FTP and SMTP servers built into it) and includes an OEM’ed version of RSA Security‘s BSAFE library for AES and 3DES encryption (up to 256-bit key lengths with AES).

Users have two options for decrypting files that have been encrypted with SecureZIP. The authentication mechanism choices are passwords or Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates. Enabling two forms of authentication gives SecureZIP users more flexibility in sharing files, because not everybody uses PKI (but we’re all familiar with passwords, for better or for worse).

For PKI-based authentication, PKWARE sells an optional module called the Advanced Encryption Module, which also brings support for X.509-based digital certificates. Using digital signatures with SecureZIP for iSeries will prove the identity of the sender and ensure files have not been tampered with since they were signed, which is a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement.

Native OS/400 Support

SecureZIP for iSeries provides native support for OS/400, and includes some things you will not find in PC-oriented products, such as a command line interface, the capability to run in batch through CL, an OS/400 API, and support for program calls from RPG, Cobol, REXX, and C++ programs.

According to company officials, a variety of OS/400 file types can be encrypted with SecureZIP for iSeries. The list includes physical files with attributes of PF-DTA, PF-SRC, and SAVF in the QSYS file system, stream files in the IFS, SAVF, and spool files.. It also supports EBCDIC/ASCII translation, 10 languages, Euro conversions, and includes SafetyX Control, which PKWARE says is an UNZIP safety table that prevents critical system-file overwriting. Users can also encrypt an entire tape dataset, without providing all the dataset’s DCB attributes, through the “cataloged tape dataset processing” feature.

PKWARE guarantees that files encrypted with SecureZIP can be distributed and opened by any platform for which PKWARE has developed a SecureZIP product, which includes Windows, z/OS, Unix, and Linux. This cross-platform compatibility enables companies that have trading partners with different types of computers to share files in a secure manner, despite the differences imparted by their operating systems. PKWARE also offers a free Windows reader that can open files that have been compressed and encrypted with SecureZIP, enabling trading partners who haven’t purchased SecureZIP to accept secure files from someone who has.

A second optional module, called the Directory Integration Module, provides Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration for pulling PKI certificates stored on popular directory servers, including Microsoft Active Directory, Novell NetWare, and Sun Microsystems‘s iPlanet.

PKZIP originally announced its SecureZIP product line in May 2004 (see “PKWARE to Support OS/400 with New SecureZIP”). At that time, the company delivered SecureZIP for Windows, and predicted versions of the product for other platforms would ship by the end of the year. The company did ship the Linux, Windows, and Unix versions of SecureZIP in October (see “PKWARE Launches PKZIP Server and SecureZIP Server Products”), but said it needed more time to test the iSeries and zSeries versions (which are based on the same code) due to the mission-critical nature of the applications running on these platforms.

PKWARE says SecureZIP for iSeries and zSeries will help companies comply with a variety of new regulations, including HIPAA, GLBA, Sarbanes Oxley, California’s privacy notification law, and Visa’s Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP). “With the proliferation of regulatory requirements governing data privacy and integrity, as well as the need to protect proprietary information being exchanged across distributed computing platforms and organizations, enterprise datacenters are increasingly seeking solutions to protect their organizations’ most critical asset–their data,” says Steve Crawford, chief marketing officer for PKWARE.

SecureZIP for iSeries version 8.0 is available now. Pricing for a P30 box is as follows: $7,900 for SecureZIP (with password-based authentication); $9,100 for SecureZIP plus the Advanced Encryption Module (AEM) for PKI certificate-based authentication; $10,300 for SecureZIP plus the AEM and the Directory Integration Module for LDAP integration. OS/400 V5R1 or higher is required. For a detailed list of PKWARE for iSeries features, see www.pkware.com/products/enterprise/iseries/sz/features.php.