• Fortra Issues 20th State of IBM i Security Report

  May 24, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM is celebrating 35 years of its midrange platform next month, and there is no doubt it will be an exciting moment for the IBM i community. But there’s another occasion you might not be aware of: the 20th annual State of IBM i Security Study, which was issued last month by Fortra (formerly HelpSystems).

  Back in 2004, the security experts at PowerTech took it upon themselves to analyze the configurations of customers’ actual iSeries and AS/400 servers (there were still AS/400s around) and write a report sharing what they found. As you might imagine, the state of security, as …

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• Top Five Failures In State of IBM i Security For 2022

  April 18, 2022 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems last week officially unveiled its annual State of IBM i Security report, the 18th straight year for the series. Like with past reports, the 2022 version highlights some of the continuing challenges that IBM i customers face when trying to secure their systems. A few key areas stand out above the rest.

  The IBM i server is a bit of an enigma when it comes to security. While it is widely perceived to be one of the most secure computing platforms on the planet – and “virus-proof” to boot – the reality is that a good number of IBM …

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• State Of IBM i Security: Seven Areas That Demand Attention

  April 24, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The latest installment of the annual State of IBM i Security was released last week by HelpSystems, and the results were about what you would expect: most IBM i servers are basically wide open for abuse.

  In a webinar last week, HelpSystems director of security technologies Robin Tatam discussed the findings of the report, which was based on security assessments conducted on 332 systems during 2016. He broke the findings down into seven core areas that should be addressed, including system security levels; administrative privileges; passwords and user profiles; data and program permissions; network access and exit programs; audit trails; …

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• State of IBM i Security? Still Horrible, After All These Years

  May 18, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When you talk to IBM about the IBM i-on-Power platform, the word “security” is used extensively, and appears frequently next to other power words like “reliability” and “availability.” But when you talk to the security software vendor PowerTech about the state of IBM i security, you might be surprised to hear words like “wide open” and “breach fatigue.” Then again, if you have been an IT Jungle reader for very long, you may not. Last month, PowerTech released its 12th annual State of IBM i Security Study. The 25-page report, which you can download from the company’s website,

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• State Of IBM i Security? Dismal As Usual, PowerTech Says

  May 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Organizations are taking unnecessary risks by neglecting to properly secure their IBM i environments, according to PowerTech‘s 2014 State of IBM i Security report, which it released last week. While PowerTech spotted all kinds of security shortcomings–ranging from too many powerful profiles to using lax security levels–the most glaring problem may have to do with poor password management. Bad password hygiene leaves IBM i shops open to external hackers and internal threats, PowerTech says. You are not going to find Heartbleed-level password problems, where billions of once-trusted passwords instantly became vulnerable overnight. But considering the level of fine-tuning that’s

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• State Of IBM i Security Remains Poor, PowerTech Says

  May 21, 2012 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are still failing to enact basic security safeguards to prevent unauthorized access of the data in their systems, according to PowerTech, which issued its annual State of IBM i Security report this month. Even when it comes to basic security concepts, like changing default passwords, minimizing user permissions, and monitoring exit points, the average IBM i shop fails spectacularly. The upshot is that most shops are gambling with their data, with a heavy bet placed on “security through obscurity.” If it was a video conference, PowerTech director of security technologies Robin Tatam would have been seen

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• Progress And Frustration With IBM i Security, Fortra Finds

  June 8, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Thanks to tougher default configurations by IBM and general awareness, the state of IBM i security has improved somewhat, Fortra says in the 2026 installment of the State of IBM i Security report. But other aspects of security show little to no improvement, leading to frustration among the company’s IBM i security experts.

  For its 23rd annual State of IBM i Security report, Fortra analyzed the security configurations of 163 IBM i server partitions. The anonymous real world data came from Fortra customers and prospects who either agreed to allow the company perform a security scan on their IBM i …

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• Q&A With IBM’s New GM Of Power, Hillery Hunter

  May 11, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM’s new general manager of Power, Hillery Hunter, made a solid first impression on the IBM i community during her attendance at the POWERUp conference in New Orleans two weeks ago. In addition to delivering a keynote address, Hunter spoke with many IBM i professionals at the show. She also made some time to speak with IT Jungle. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

  Alex Woodie: Your keynote address during the POWERUp Opening Session was great. Could you elaborate on some of the points you were making about using IBM i as a platform for AI?

  Hillery Hunter: …

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• The Big Easy: Connecting The Dots On Big Blue’s AI Strategy For IBM i

  May 4, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM has not yet formally announced the new AI products that it is building for IBM i. We know about Bob and the MCP server, but there is a lot more AI stuff coming to IBM i. IBM shared details of what is coming in closed sessions at POWERUp in New Orleans last week, but hints about where it is going and what is coming were there, if you knew where to look.

  IBM i, as we all know, is a business platform. It runs enterprise applications and it runs them extremely well. If you want to model a nuclear …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 16

  April 20, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but this is definitely not true in a lot of the United States right now. Mayflowers can, and possibly might, still bring Pilgrims.

  Meanwhile, back in IBM i Land, there are a thousand lakes and rolling farmland with the occasional city far off in the distance, plus a remediation of a bug in the Java PTF Group and a security vulnerability that you have to take a gander at.

  Let’s start with the security vulnerability, which is outlined in Security Bulletin: IBM i is affected by a privilege escalation vulnerability in Web …

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