IBM z/OS V2R1 Communications Server TCP/IP Implementation Volume 4: Security and Policy-Based Networking

Book excerpt: For more than 40 years, IBM® mainframes have supported an extraordinary portion of the world's computing work, providing centralized corporate databases and mission-critical enterprise-wide applications. IBM System z®, the latest generation of the IBM distinguished family of mainframe systems, has come a long way from its IBM System/360 heritage. Likewise, its IBM z/OS® operating system is far superior to its predecessors in providing, among many other capabilities, world-class and state-of-the-art support for the TCP/IP Internet protocol suite. TCP/IP is a large and evolving collection of communication protocols managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an open, volunteer organization. Because of its openness, the TCP/IP protocol suite has become the foundation for the set of technologies that form the basis of the Internet. The convergence of IBM mainframe capabilities with Internet technology, connectivity, and standards (particularly TCP/IP) is dramatically changing the face of information technology and driving requirements for ever more secure, scalable, and highly available mainframe TCP/IP implementations. The IBM z/OS Communications Server TCP/IP Implementation series provides understandable, step-by-step guidance about how to enable the most commonly used and important functions of z/OS Communications Server TCP/IP. This IBM Redbooks® publication is for people who install and support z/OS Communications Server. It explains how to set up security for your z/OS networking environment. Network security requirements have become more stringent and complex. Because many transactions are from unknown users and untrusted networks, careful attention must be given to host and user authentication, data privacy, data origin authentication, and data integrity. Also, because security technologies are complex and can be confusing, we include helpful tutorial information in the appendixes of this book.