• Security Vulnerability In VIOS, AIX, And Maybe IBM i

  November 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM i shops that use the Virtual I/O Server, which is a cut-down version of the AIX implementation of Unix created by Big Blue, have to be aware that there is a security vulnerability that affects recent releases of AIX and VIOS.

  The vulnerability, announced in Security Vulnerability CVE-2020-4788, affects Power9 machinery running VIOS 3.1 or AIX 7.1 and AIX 7.2, and under what are called “extenuating circumstances” the vulnerability could allow a local user on the system to obtain sensitive information stored on the L1 cache on the Power9 cores.

  The vulnerability was reported on November 18, and …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 47

  November 23, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  As we report elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, there is a new security bulletin that has been issued relating to a speculative execution vulnerability that affects Power9 systems running the Virtual I/O Server in general and AIX 7.1 and AIX 7.2 in particular. As such, it indirectly affects all four IBM i releases, from 7.1 through 7.4. See Security Bulletin: Vulnerability CVE-2020-4788 at this link.

  The patches to deal with this vulnerability are as follows:

  • IBM i 7.4: MF68089 and MF68090
  • IBM i 7.3: MF68094 and MF68095
  • IBM i 7.2: MF68096 and MF68097
  • IBM i

  …

  Read more

• Trinity Guard Unveils New Tools for Linux, Db2 for i

  November 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Trinity Guard is on the move. The Houston, Texas, based security software company, which is the spiritual successor to the PentaSafe products, is rolling out a full auditing solution for Linux. It’s also developing a Linux version of its security management tool, TGCentral, with an AIX version up next. Plus it’s months away from releasing an encryption solution for Db2 for i.

  2020 has not been easy for anyone, but it’s not stopping the folks at Trinity Guard from moving forward on its roadmap items. Near the top of that list is increased support for running on Linux, which has …

  Read more

• Christmas for Ransomware: How COVID-19 Is Fueling Cybercrime

  November 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  American tech professionals may be feeling secure working from home in 2020, but that warm fuzzy feeling quickly turns into a sticky, cold sweat when one realizes all the overtime that cybercriminals are putting in to steal your hard-won resources. The situation is getting so bad that some have taken to calling COVID-19 “Christmas for ransomware.”

  According to Bitdefender’s “Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report 2020,” reports of ransomware increased by 715 percent from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020. The company says that this figure suggests that threat actors upped their ransomware campaigns to …

  Read more

• Don’t Count Tape Out Just Yet, ESG Report Says

  November 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Public cloud and disk-based backup systems are growing in popularity. But when it comes to keeping up with the explosion in data backup and archive volumes, organizations still are relying on tape to deliver the goods, according to a new report from the Enterprise Strategy Group.

  For Enterprise Strategy Group’s “2020 Tape Landscape” report, which it produced on behalf of the LTO Program, ESG surveyed more than 300 IT professionals from American and Canadian organizations to get a feel for their data protection requirements, with a focus on backup and archive.

  The analyst group determined that the average …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, November 18

  November 18, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  The effects of the coronavirus have forced people around the world to slow down. We have had to learn to go without and be patient due to delays in pretty much everything due to Covid. But the cloud slows down for no person, or virus, and it seems like the race to cloud supremacy is actually heating up, even as nations around the world head into a second round of lockdowns. IBM has no intention of pumping the brakes on its hybrid cloud aspirations, as you’ll notice while perusing our Top Stories this week. And if you are locked down, …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 46

  November 18, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  First, thank you to Kent Stoner for catching the error in the IBM i 7.3 Defective PTF. It should have been SI73926 – it has been corrected below. There are new Cumes for IBM i 7.2, IBM i 7.3, and IBM i 7.4, and we made it through Friday the 13^th and the new Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 were indeed available. Also, a reminder that there is a new version of Access Client Solutions that is due in the first week of December, and finally, there are no new defective PTFs this week. …

  Read more

• Big Blue Revives IBM i 7.1 With Power9 Support

  November 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We don’t get surprises very often in the Power Systems market, and even fewer in the IBM i sub-market. But last week, we did get a surprise – and it was a pleasant one – as Big Blue decided that it was going to allow for IBM i 7.1, which has long since been removed from marketing and which was just recently given extended extended support through April 2023, to run on selected models of the Power Systems line using Power9 processors.

  That IBM would allow for this is remarkable, and it shows the economic and technical difficulties that many …

  Read more

• Disaster Recovery, At Your Service

  November 16, 2020 Matt Paterini

  Every organization needs a sound disaster recovery plan to protect their business from natural disasters, weather events, cyber-attacks, and other unexpected threats. Disaster recovery strategies can take on different forms depending on the requirements of the business, specifically the defined Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

  These RTO and RPO metrics are not precisely the same, but they are interrelated and are part of a complete disaster recovery plan.

  The RTO metric is not just a stopwatch that starts ticking between the time applications go down, for whatever reason, and when they come back again online again. …

  Read more

• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 10 – Debugger Enhancements

  November 16, 2020 Susan Gantner

  Here I go again – more enhancements to talk about that have come about in RDi V9.6. This time, it’s the debugger that has been enhanced. The 9.6.0.7 fix pack included some new goodies for the debugger.

  Both of the enhanced features were popular Requests for Enhancement (RFEs) — the ability to display very large variable values and the addition of a condition to Service Entry Points (SEPs). These are further proof that the RFE process works. If you haven’t visited the RFE site to vote for your favorite suggested features for RDi, do it now. . . or maybe …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles