37559: STIGs (Security Technical Implementation Guides): Mainframe Security Beyond ACF2, RACF, and Top Secret

Project and Program: Service Delivery, Security

Tags: Proceedings , SHARE Atlanta 2023

What does it mean to secure a mainframe properly? Is regulatory compliance sufficient - or even provable? Does it mean turning on new features or deprecating old ones in the operating system and middleware? Can you do it while using application-based security, or are External Security Manager (ESM) controls necessary? Or does USS make it all a moot point? After nearly 60 years, we certainly have security habits, embedded configurations, and culture, but making them click with a clear set of modern standards might seem insurmountable. That's where STIGs (Security Technical Implementation Guides) come in: documents designed to help you surmount this challenge. Product and security experts have used the NIST cybersecurity framework and 800-53 specification as the bases for designing how-to documents to guide you through ensuring that your technology is installed, configured, and used in the best practices manner that is compliant with current requirements and regulations for properly securing systems - including the mainframe - and including crucial software on the mainframe, from the ESMs themselves (IBM's RACF and Broadcom's ACF2 and Top Secret) to a wide range of software that needs properly-configured security capabilities in order to ensure you are operating in a responsibly secure manner. Join Reg Harbeck and Balamurugan Venkatachalam as they open upthis topic and review the nature, range, and applicability of STIGs in today's leading-edge mainframe.

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