• IBM Thwarts Ransomware in FlashSystem with New Data Safeguard

  July 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The steep uptick in ransomware attacks this summer has gained the full attention of business and tech leaders at businesses of all sizes. It also has the attention of IT vendors, including IBM, which last week added a new data protection mechanism to FlashSystem intended to help thwart ransomware attacks.

  Ransomware, which has been simmering on the security backburner for years, has roared to life this summer, thanks to several high-profile attacks that caused severe business disruptions, including Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and Scripps Health, among others. While the attacks on these large companies were headline-grabbing, they bely the full …

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• Time To Design – And Deliver – The Application System/360

  July 19, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The stupidest thing IBM ever did was create a system other than the System/360. It had the perfect name and it had the right idea of creating a compatible line of small, medium, and large enterprise systems that ran a widening variety of operating systems and workloads, often concurrent on the same machine. The AS/400 really should have been the third generation of System/360 machines, and the systems today would be somewhere around the sixth of seventh or even tenth generation, however you want to think about it.

  Every decade or so in IBM’s history, it has tried to converge …

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• How IBM i Fits Into a Zero-Trust Security Framework

  July 19, 2021 Alex Woodie

  One of the hot new trends in cybersecurity these days is the zero-trust security model. Instead of implicitly trusting network traffic behind the firewall, zero-trust demands that traffic have explicit permission to be there. But how does that model work with the strange beast known as IBM i? IT Jungle recently sat down with PJ Kirner, the CTO and co-founder of zero-trust software provider Illumio, to find out.

  Illumio is an eight-year-old venture-backed startup based in Sunnyvale, California, that is working in the field of zero-trust security. It develops an offering, called Illumio Core, that allows companies to begin implementing …

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• Guru: One-Shot Requests and Quoted Column Names

  July 19, 2021 Ted Holt

  If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me to query data for them over the years, I could have retired already. (I did not say I would have, but that I could have.) It’s nice when the users can retrieve the information they need to do their jobs without help from IT, but when a request is too complex for them, I’m always glad to help.

  I’ve used many tools over the years for one-shot requests for raw data. These days my tool of choice is the Run SQL Scripts tool, which is part of IBM …

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• As I See It: Delusionware

  July 19, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Currency has always been the product of mass hallucination. From shells to spices, bottle caps to urine, what people decide is valuable, and what they are willing to trade life energy for, is as varied as imagination and circumstance. (In case you’re wondering, clean urine is used in prisons to pass drug tests and can be bartered for goods and services that are best left unnamed.)

  All that is required for a currency to have value is that enough people share the same delusion. And suddenly, little pieces of paper with numbers and the faces of departed presidents (and lesser …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 29

  July 19, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to the latest edition of the IBM i PTF Guide. In this week’s edition, you will find updated microcode for Firmware 860. The latest service pack 860.A0 is now available for System firmware level SC860 and SV860. You can find more at this link.

  Also, IBM is announcing PTFs MH01895 and MH01896, which are an ifix for HMC V9 R1 M942. You can find out more in this link.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs
  • Db2 for IBM i
  • IBM Db2 Mirror for i

  PTF Groups …

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• Book A Date With Your DR Plan

  July 14, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Chances are, you’ve been through a lot in the past year, from a personal, a professional, and a public health perspective. Your company’s IT estate has probably gone through some changes, too. To keep your IBM i and open systems resilient and able to withstand misfortune, it’s a good idea to revisit your disaster recovery plan to make sure it reflects current reality.

  During COMMON’s recent NAViGATE event, IBM i DR expert Richard Dolewski provided a great description of why it’s so important to check your DR plan now. With so much turmoil caused by COVID, it’s simply too …

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• Comarch’s PowerCloud Gives IBM, Microsoft, And Google A Run For The Money

  July 14, 2021 Tomasz Wachnicki

  If you are looking for a cloud provider that has expertise in Power-based systems and that has datacenters in the United States, Europe, and Asia – so they are local to those geographies – and yet available on a truly global basis, and backed by deep experience in managed services for IBM i and AIX platforms, you have an option that you might not be aware of. The company is called Comarch, and it is taking on IBM, Google, and Microsoft/Skytap for IBM i and AIX business in the cloud.

  For those of you who are unaware of Comarch, it …

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• Altova Updates Db2 for i Support Across Product Line

  July 14, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use data and development tools from Altova will be happy to know that the software vendor has added support for the latest release of Db2 for i among several of its tools.

  Altova is a Beverley, Massachusetts, company that develops a series of software tools and utilities for developers. The company is arguably best known as the creator of XMLSpy, an IDE that allows developers to create XML-based Web services using standards like WSDL; it later added support for JSON data and the modern SOAP protocol.

  In 2010, Altova added support for IBM i in MissionKit, …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, July 14

  July 14, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  The biggest computing news that happened while IT Jungle was on holiday last week was the REvil ransomware attack, which infected thousands of victims in at least 17 countries. The attack was largely through firms that remotely manage IT infrastructure for multiple customers, a scary thought for our IBM i ecosystem. We often site stories here in Monitor about ransomware and other types of cybercrime, and we hope your organization is taking steps to protect its precious data and systems. Our top story this week looks at why ransomware is becoming so prevalent, and don’t miss our own Alex Woodie’s …

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