This is a question from our Feb. 17 Securing Your Messaging and Managed File Transfers webcast:

Is there any overhead when using AMS?

When you are performing any form on signing or encryption there will always be an overhead.  It is impossible to specify exactly how much this will be because it depends on a number of factors such as message throughput, message size, quality of protection, spare CPU capacity on the server, etc.

The best way to gauge the affect would be to take a specific scenario for your organisation, estimate the throughput and average message size.  Then try this workload through an AMS protected queue on the hardware you intend to deply on.  This is the only way to get an accurate understanding of the impact on any given workload.  This can then be used to make an informed decision when weighing up risk vs cost (which is a decision every security solution inevitably comes down to).

Just to add to Alan's answer - one of the nice things about WMQ AMS is that the administrator defines policies that get applied to individual queues, not to the whole queue manager. This means that you can identify the routes through your WMQ network which need to be protected and encrypted and apply security policies on an appropriate basis. So you could transparently cause only those messages and queues containing customer payment details (for example), but leave SSL channels and standard MQ security to cover the other security requirements for the rest of your message data.

The key points here are to be pragmatic, and apply the right levels of security in the right places. There will be a balance between performance, the needs of your application and your business, and the technology. Try it and see what is most appropriate.