Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is the de facto standard for encrypted file exchange among the world’s largest financial, medical, industrial, and services companies. Based on open standards and tested by time, PGP has won the trust of governments and private enterprises to protect their sensitive data. Here are the six key things to know about PGP encryption for your IBM i and IBM z platforms, and how to discuss them with your technology providers:
1) Always encrypt and decrypt sensitive data on the platform where it is created. This is the only way to satisfy regulatory audit and privacy notification requirements.
Moving data to a PC for encryption and decryption tasks greatly increases the chances of loss and puts your most sensitive data at risk. In order not to defeat your data security goals it is important to encrypt and decrypt data directly on the IBM i or IBM z.
2) The best PGP encryption solutions manage PGP keys directly on the IBM i or IBM z without the need for an external PC system, or key generation on a PC.
Using a PC to generate or manage PGP keys exposes the keys on the most vulnerable system. The loss of PGP keys may trigger expensive and time-consuming privacy notification requirements and force the change of PGP keys with all of your trading partners.
3) The best data security solutions will provide you with IBM i and IBM z automation tools that help minimize additional programming and meet your integration requirements.
Most Enterprise customers find that the cost of the software for an encryption solution is small compared to the cost of integrating the solution into their business applications. Data must be extracted from business applications, encrypted using PGP, transmitted to a trading partner, archived for future access, and tracked for regulatory audit. When receiving an encrypted file from a trading partner the file must be decrypted, transferred to an IBM i or IBM z library, and processed into the business application. All of these operations have to be automated to avoid expensive and time-consuming manual intervention.
4) PGP is part of a comprehensive data security plan.
PGP encryption is ideal for exchanging data with trading partners, banks, insurance companies, benefits providers, and many other external partners. It’s ability to run on any computing platform makes it ideal for this type of secure data exchange.
5) PGP helps meet data privacy compliance regulations.
Even if your company is not directly subject to PCI and other similar regulations, you will soon find that your customers who are subject to these laws will require that you be in compliance, too. As the financial auditing profession matures, auditors realize that their customers cannot meet regulatory requirements unless their suppliers meet these requirements.
6) Choose the trusted leader in data security.
When PGP Corporation selected a partner to bring PGP version 9 to the IBM i, POWER Linux, and IBM System z platforms, they selected Townsend Security as their exclusive partner. PGP Corporation’s knowledge of Townsend’s history with PGP on the IBM i and IBM z platforms made Townsend Security the natural choice.
Click the button below to download a free trial of PGP for the IBM i or IBM z from Townsend Security.
