• Original Refocuses on IBM i Test Automation

  May 1, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Original Software never left the IBM i software market, though it might have seemed that way to some people. But thanks to a new website devoted to exploring issues, challenges, and solutions on the topic of IBM i test automation, the British software company is redoubling its efforts around the midrange platform.

  “We really never un-engaged with it, to be fair,” says Original Software COO George Wilson says of IBM i. “We’ve kind of widened the radar a bit. That was probably 15 years ago. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to the IBM midrange marketplace. What we’ve just done …

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• Syncsort Debuts Unified IBM i Security Suite

  April 10, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort rolled out a suite of software this week that unifies several of the IBM i security products it has acquired over past two years. Dubbed Assure Security, the suite is designed to help IBM i shops lock down servers and protect them from threats while getting a handle on emerging data regulations, like the looming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

  The acquisition of Vision Solutions by Syncsort back in June 2017 closely coincided with the two companies’ joint pivot into data security. Vision, of course, was best known as a provider of IBM i high availability solutions when it …

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• More IBM i Predictions For 2019

  February 6, 2019 Alex Woodie

  We kicked off our 2019 soothsaying last week with predictions from IBM i leaders on what the New Year will bring. We keep the ball rolling this week with another batch of predictions from our friends around the IBM i community.

  According to Alison Butterill, IBM‘s the program director for offering management for IBM i, the platform will build off the momentum generated with last year’s 30th anniversary celebrant.

  “The excitement begun in 2018 as we highlighted client innovation around the world will continue into 2019,” Butterill says. “The momentum continues to grow as clients are looking at ways …

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• Security Posture Mixed As Feds Say ‘Shields Up’

  January 14, 2019 Alex Woodie

  “Raise your shield.” That’s the message the Federal Government sent to American businesses last week as part of a new cybersecurity awareness campaign. But according to a recent survey of security professionals by Syncsort, the majority of enterprises, including IBM i shops, are confident in the security protections that are already in place. The big question: Have they actually done enough?

  The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) kicked off a new security awareness campaign last week called “Know the Risk, Raise Your Shield.” The NCSC says that foreign intelligence entities are actively targeting information, assets, and technologies” that are …

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• Data Needs To Be Anonymized For Dev And Test

  November 14, 2018 Scott Heinlein

  (Sponsored Content) Every company needs to create applications and then test those applications against a database that has real data in it. And therefore, most companies will take their test data from production databases and make a copy of it, or a subset of it, to do such testing, usually by doing a bulk copy. And at that moment, all of the sensitive data in that database is exposed to the programmers and testers.

  Given that in excess of 80 percent of information leaks start from an internal source, this is a potential – and possibly great – …

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• GDPR Compliance On IBM i A Work In Progress, Survey Finds

  August 20, 2018 Alex Woodie

  About 50 percent of IBM i shops say they’re compliant with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to a recent survey by SoftLanding Systems. However, about a quarter of survey respondents say they have a way to go before they’re confident in their GDPR preparedness, the IBM i vendor says.

  GDPR, which went into effect on May 25, made big changes to laws governing how companies and other organizations are allowed to collect, process, and store data about European Union citizens. While not every American firm is required to adhere to GDPR, those that do business with …

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• Syncsort Unveils MFA, Bolsters IBM i Security Suites

  July 30, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort last week unveiled new security and auditing capabilities for its IBM i user base, including a new multi-factor authentication (MFA) solution dubbed the Cilasoft Reinforced Authentication Manager for IBM i, as well as new releases of the Cilasoft and Enforcive security suites.

  Developing and selling security software has become one of the focuses for Syncsort, the Pearl River, New York, company that previously concentrated on developing mainframe data integration solutions and extract, transfer, and load (ETL) technology for distributed Hadoop clusters.

  Since it merged with IBM i high availability vendor Vision Solutions last year, Syncsort has acquired several …

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• Trinity Guard Gives Audit Tool A Friendly GUI

  June 25, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IT professionals who are tired of using 5250 greenscreens to manually conduct regulatory audits of their IBM i systems may be interested in a colorful piece of software from Trinity Guard. The company recently launched TGCentral, which is a unified HTML interface designed to simplify the configuration and execution of security and regulatory audits across multiple IBM i servers.

  As the spiritual and intellectual successor to PentaSafe, Trinity Guard understands how beloved those old PentaSafe products were. Even though NetIQ/Attachmate/Micro Focus has not added any new features to its IBM i security suite for over a decade, there were …

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• GDPR and IBM i: The Final Countdown

  May 2, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have just 24 days until the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect. If you haven’t started your GDPR project yet, it’s likely too late to complete it by May 25. But a good faith start to a GDPR remediation effort could benefit you in the eyes of regulators, should you happen to cross their path. Here’s what IBM i shops need to know as the countdown to GDPR-ageddon continues.

  GDPR is a far-reaching law that governs how companies and other organizations are allowed to collect, process, and store data about European Union citizens, no matter …

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• GDPR Data Discovery On Tap from Raz-Lee

  April 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

  With less than six weeks to go before the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, it’s crunch time for remediation. For IBM i shops that aren’t sure where sensitive data resides in their databases, a power tool from Raz-Lee Security can provide some automated relief.

  The GDPR represents a dramatic overhaul of the privacy laws governing what companies can do with data about European citizens. Backed by the central European Union government, the GDPR provides sweeping new rules that require any organization storing data about EU citizens to obtain consent for that data, to ensure that it’s protected, …

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