Just as mainframes are seeing a resurgence in usage, a recent poll revealed that multiple factors are converging to make it harder to secure the mission-critical data they contain and, increasingly, share with cloud-based systems and applications. Respondents cited new types of attacks as a top challenge and indicated that simple security measures are not yet widely adopted.
Even as a large and growing number of organizations point to security as a top benefit of the mainframe over other platforms — thanks in part to the sweeping encryption IBM enabled in the z14 and newest z15 systems — the poll of mainframe/IBM Z users uncovered a disconnect between that belief and the reality those organizations face in securing mainframe environments.
What Are the Top Challenges in Securing Mainframe Environments?
The poll, conducted for IBM in late summer 2019 by Enterprise Management Associates, found that the top challenge in securing mainframe environments is the ability to stay up to date on new types of attacks aimed at mainframes. While 35 percent of respondents indicated that was the top challenge, another 29 percent said that having adequate, mainframe-specific tools to optimize security was the biggest challenge. These results are different sides of the same coin.
The top-ranked mainframe security challenge response comes at a time when black-hat hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in targeting mainframe vulnerabilities for exploitation and data theft, thanks to a greater level of education becoming available at conferences such as Black Hat and DEF CON, via pen testing services, and on the cybercriminals winning mainframe security mouse
