Content provided in partnership with

Technology Industry

Not so secure after all

Communications News, May, 2007

IBM's AS/400 or iSeries platform is well known to many IT managers. There are an estimated 400,000 of these machines deployed, and 98 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies run some part of their business on this architecture. Some of the most sensitive information a company keeps is stored on the system, including critical applications such as accounting, payroll, inventory control, order entry and customer care applications.

The platform's security is rarely questioned, but according to a study conducted by The PowerTech Group, the overall security of machines in the field is often both poorly managed and poorly configured by the organizations that use it. The study is based on the results of nearly 200 system audits.

Most Popular Articles in Technology: An overview of continuous data protection; Why all those current ratings?; Many countries now have a mobile penetration rate above 100%, report says; The Tata Group's big telecom gamble: VSNL's recent acquisition of Tyco ...; MEASURING BANK BRANCH EFFICIENCY USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS: MANAGERIAL ...; More »

"IBM has architected the iSeries with industry-leading security capabilities," says PowerTech President and CEO Jon Scott. "The study points out that a large percentage of systems are not configured correctly by IT departments with respect to security, resulting in a large number of systems being vulnerable to internal security breaches."

Many OS/400 shops, he contends, have yet to embrace the new security technologies that are available in IBM's architecture and through third-party security applications, leaving their critical data exposed.

Among the study's findings:

* 76 percent of systems do not control or audit changes to data made through PC access applications like MS Excel and MS Access, creating uncontrolled network access;

* 10 percent of all users have privileged access (root level access) authority;

* confidential reports can be viewed by 20 percent of all users; and

* half of all systems have more than 20 users with default passwords that can be easily determined by any attacker.

Technology Industry

Not so secure after all

Communications News, May, 2007

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Technology

Most Popular Publications in Technology