Townsend Security Data Privacy Blog

The modern enterprise runs on a variety of computing platforms. The concept of being "an IBM shop" has gone the way of the buggy whip. With cloud computing and virtual machine technology, you may not even know what your hardware base is. This has caused  those seeking to realize the benefits of standardization to shift their focus to the software.

Take, for example, the need for securely transferring files, both within the organization and between trading partners. In the UNIX-Linux-Windows world the de facto standard for secure file transfer is undoubtedly PGP. The technology is mature and it is implemented on every significant OS variant in common use. It is extensively documented and familiar to a very large number of programmers and administrators.

But while the IBM shop may have disappeared, IBM servers have not. The enterprise is often built around mainframes and mid-range servers. And these servers now need to inter-operate with not only desktop PCs, but mobile laptops and cell phones. This makes the ability to settle on a single secure file transfer standard for the entire company more important than ever.

Fortunately PGP has spread to both the mainframe and mid-range platforms; IBM series z and i. And not just in a quirky slapdash port to UNIX emulation environments, but as fully supported native z/OS applications integrated with RACF and controlled via JCL.

With PGP it is possible to have all the advantages of a uniform secure file transfer approach without sacrificing any of the security and scalability of enterprise level platforms.

If you would like to download a free 30-evaluation of PGP for the IBM i or IBM z, let us know.  We'd be happy to show you how easy it is to encrypt with PGP and transfer to your trading partner.

IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) users send a lot of sensitive information to their customers, vendors, and employees which needs to be protected with strong encryption. Our customers today are using our PGP encryption solution to protect files. But there has been a big need to generate and protect information in common PC formats. With our upcoming release of Alliance FTP Manager for IBM i, we are stepping up our support with encrypted Zip files and encrypted PDF files.

Zip compression is very commonly used to send files via email. Not only does zip compression make our email attachments smaller, but the most popular zip compression programs now support 256-bit AES encryption of the contents. The ability to encrypt Zip files with AES provides a much better level of security than older zip protection methods. In the new release of Alliance FTP File Manager for IBM i we fully support Zip encryption to the WinZip standard. This means that you can create and protect Zip files on your IBM i platform, and then use a variety of delivery methods to get the Zip files in the hands of your customers, vendors, and employees. This will immediately give IBM i customers a new tool to meet compliance regulations.

The new Zip support provides rich capabilities to IBM i users. You can create encrypted or un-encrypted zip archives, include sub-directories, and use wild cards to select files. When uncompressing and decrypting you can specify any directory as the target for the files. This capability integrates with our automation facilities for processing received files. Lastly, we provide a Windows command line Zip application to help our customers who don’t already have a Zip application. I’m confident that this new capability will help our customers achieve a better level of security.

The other new security technology in FTP Manager for IBM i is our encrypted PDF support. In this first implementation, our customers will be able to create encrypted PDFs with their own content, and then use the automation facilities to distribute the PDFs via email, FTP, and other distribution methods. Encrypted PDF support includes the ability to set fonts and colors, embed watermark and graphic images, set headers and footers, and create tables and lists. The resulting encrypted PDF file is compatible with any PDF reader that supports the AES encryption standard for PDF. We’ve tested with a wide variety of PDF readers on PCs, Apple Macs, Blackberry, Linux desktops, and so forth. This will give our customers an additional tool to secure their sensitive data.

These new technologies for the IBM i customer will increase their abilities to meet compliance regulations and secure sensitive data. I hope you get the idea that we are dedicated to helping you protect your sensitive data and corporate assets. You are going to see a lot more of these types of new capabilities as we go forward.

Patrick