• What Is Threatening IBM i Security Now

  March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  The nature of cybersecurity threats is always changing, which requires constant vigilance by those who value security. IBM i is just as exposed to threats as any other networked operating system on the planet, but it’s also unique in certain ways, which actually makes security harder. To get the lowdown on how these phenomena interrelate in the first quarter of 2026, we turn to renown IBM i security expert Carol Woodbury from Kisco.

  Woodbury recently sat down with Justin Loeber, the Kisco owner and head of business development, to present a webinar titled IBM i Threat Landscape 2026: A Fireside …

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• Fortra Leans On XDR For Full Spectrum Security

  July 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to security, more is often better. As in, more security professionals running more security products and services that deliver more overlapping coverage of your security weaknesses. The good news for IBM i shops is that Fortra delivers more solutions with more coverage than probably anyone else in the industry, particularly with its XDR solution.

  XDR, or extended detection and response, is the state of the art for enterprise security today, and essentially is replacing security information and event management (SIEM) tools at the top of the security food chain, says Tom Huntington, the vice president of technical …

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• IBM i Security Concern Hits All-Time High, But Solution Adoption Lags, Fortra’s Marketplace Study Shows

  February 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Security is the number one concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s Marketplace Study, the seventh straight year that security has topped the charts. More survey respondents chose security as their top concern than any other year. Despite the growing security concern, there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding increase in adoption of security tools, the survey data show.

  Fortra released the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Study last month, representing the 10th straight year that the company (formerly HelpSystems) has conducted the survey and published the findings. Last fall, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world, …

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• IBM To Add Generative AI To QRadar

  November 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  If you feel that cyber crooks are getting the upper hand, you’re not alone. Studies show cybercrime volume booming while security professionals struggle to connect the dots and keep up. One possible route forward was presented last week by IBM, which announced that it will add generative AI capabilities to its QRadar SIEM tool.

  Security information and event management (SIEM) tools are the sharp end of the stick for security-loving organizations, as they are where the hard work of assembling security data from all of the various components in the modern IT stack (including IBM i) and then trying to …

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• 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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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• Immutable Copies Are Only As Good As Your Validation

  May 23, 2022 Stan Wilkins

  A system can always be replaced, but the files and objects that comprise the application and the data that makes it useful can fall victim to all sorts of decay, neglect, or abuse in a modern system. And that is why we did backups to tape subsystems, or even tape libraries and then virtual tape libraries based on disk drives for so many years. And for those who cannot afford to have downtime or lost data, the IBM i base has been fortunate to have some of the best high availability clustering ever invented.

  With ransomware and malware attacks on …

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• Guru: IBM i *USRPRF Security

  May 23, 2022 Bruce Bading

  IBM i has long enjoyed a reputation of being one of the most securable application servers in the industry. IBM i object encapsulation or object-oriented architecture achieves a level of technology integrity not found in file-based systems such as Unix, Linux, and Windows – as long as QSECUTY is set to 40 or 50.

  This advanced technology however does not exclude the IBM i from security risks if your development teams are not practicing (DevSecOps | CSRC (nist.gov)) and (Zero Trust Architecture | NIST).

  Let me remind what one of the lead signatories on the Agile …

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• Guru: SIEM Is Only Part Of IBM i Cybersecurity

  March 28, 2022 Bruce Bading

  Many times, we hear from IBM i business owners that their SIEM – that’s short for Security Information and Event Management – is their cybersecurity solution for the IBM i. But that can’t be true, and I want to explain why it is part of the security shield but certainly not all of it.

  Let’s start with SIEMs and how they fit into cybersecurity frameworks. SIEM is mentioned in the PCI appendix, but not once in the core of the 250+ PCI DSS requirements, likewise, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework lists event monitoring as one of the 100s (1/100s) of NIST …

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• How Fresche Fills Security Gap with Trinity Guard

  March 21, 2022 Alex Woodie

  We live in a world full of security threats. Black hat hackers – some working for themselves and some working for the governments of China and Russia – are constantly probing the Internet, looking for weak links in the information supply chain. With its acquisition of Trinity Guard, Fresche Solutions is determined to prevent your IBM i server from being one of them.

  It can be hard to fathom the impact that cybersecurity attacks have on the world, and the enormous pains that some organizations are taking to thwart them. In 2021, ransomware grabbed our attention thanks to large attacks …

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