IBM Security for Z

Earlier this year, IBM delivered the IBM Z Security and Compliance Center (Link) offering which automates the collection of compliance data and the reporting of compliance posture for IBM zSystems and LinuxONE platforms. The solution primarily focuses on evaluating for compliance and identifies non compliance on IBM z/OS and Linux on Z workloads. In case of z/OS , IBM  delivered a z/OS compliance data collection infrastructure where the compliance relevant information from various subsystems in z/OS are written to SMF 1154 records (Link) which are consumed by IBM Z Security and Compliance Center to do validation against controls in various regulatory , Security and custom profiles.

IBM Z Security and Compliance Center is now adding support for running on IBM z/OS Container Extenstion (zCX) with IBM zCX Foundation for Red Hat Openshift (Link). With this support, an IBM z/OS client will be able to deploy IBM Z Security and Compliance Center natively on IBM z/OS. The user experience of IBM Z Security and Compliance Center remains the same for deployments on IBM zCX Foundation for Red Hat OpenShift and on Redhat OpenShift deployments on Linux on IBM zSystems with KVM (or) z/VM hypervisors.

Compliance journey on IBM z/OS with Modernization

With the support for IBM zCX Foundation for Red Hat OpenShift, all the compliance evidence (facts) and scan results for IBM z/OS and its subsystem are stored and managed natively within IBM z/OS and in parallel this will enable clients to move towards a true hybrid cloud scenario where compliance automation is enabled for modern workloads on IBM z/OS.

IBM Z Security compliance center can be deployed on either IBM z15 or IBM z16 and can collect and validate compliance evidences from all supported IBM zSystems provided the software pre-req’s ( i.e IBM z/OS v2R4 (or) IBM z/OS v2R5) are met.

The Hardware pre-requisites for IBM zCX Foundation for Red Hat OpenShift are documented here. In addition, IBM Z Security and Compliance Center will require a minimum of 3TB of shared persistent storage available to IBM zCX Foundation For Red Hat Openshift to store compliance facts and reports.

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