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SF-Utilities

Unique utilities as individual solutions

We license selected parts of our solutions as individual utilities for dedicated and highly specialized kinds of processing:

Syslog Message Router for z/OS: message transfer to any syslog daemon

It lets you send message files to any syslog daemon while supporting the following optional features:

N
Usability for both MVS and UNIX files

N
UDP and TCP transfer

N
Rewind/clear operation after successful log file transfer

N
Pre-validation of the target IP address and its connectivity via test ping or reference connect

N
Free maximum line length, and

N
Optional reformatting of excessive lines.

Ultimate Health Check for z/OS: IPL simulation combined with PARMLIB and VTAMLST checking

Complete the z/OS Health Checker by hiring a real specialist for your “z/OS health team.” Ultimate Health Check for z/OS provides IPL simulation combined with syntax and semantics checking for the PARMLIB and VTAMLST files. Only this kind of comprehensive and pro-active quality assurance lets you prevent IPL failures due to any specification errors, such as a missing comma.

We deliver these reliable and unique utilities outside the regular context of SF solutions to provide you with the most cost-effective licensing possible.

Compliance

Over the past several years, compliance has become more and more an important issue, but also a tedious task. Our SF solutions assist you in automating the resulting workload to the max by also covering the entire mainframe platform - thanks to a 360-degree approach.

Protection

With SF-Sherlock, you can also protect your mainframe platform against attacks and combat high-level risks. Thanks to our max approach this also includes malicious code and exploits. Yes, both of these are real risks on the mainframe platform!

SF Solutions

All SF solutions are invented and developed in-house. Therefore, you can count on both our unique expertise and our high level of motivation in providing you with solutions and services with maximum performance, effectiveness, and productivity.

Are you expecting a governmental audit of your mainframe platform soon, as
by the BaFin, ECB, or one of
the “Big Four”?

Let us help you prepare your mainframe security and compliance.

+800 - 37 333 853 or simply dial: +800 - DRFEDTKE

Call our world-wide toll-free number now!

(+ represents the prefix for international calls; in most countries it is 00, and you have to dial 00800-37333853; in the U.S. it corresponds to 011)

News & IT Security Forum

System REXX and BCPii are the ”next APF“

If you look back along the evolutionary steps of mainframe security, APF libraries play a leading role – due to their “superpower.” Until the 1980s, “almost anyone” working on a mainframe was able and allowed to define one themselves. In most cases, there was no APF library protection at all. Then there was a phase where APF-related auditing received more and more attention, and correspondingly became an important audit issue.

The attention that “APF” received as a security risk has continued to increase over time. Today, it has almost reached the highest level of awareness: only a very few members of a company’s mainframe team are allowed to define a new APF library or update existing ones. Any such action requires prior permission, not just some documentation after it has happened. On our customer visits, we have seen companies where a new APF library requires not only an official change request, but up to “5 signatures.” Otherwise, you lose your job. Correspondingly, relentless monitoring and compliance reporting has become standard for the “APF” risk, resulting in real-time security alerts by a SIEM if corresponding rules are bypassed.

So far, so good. Now that there is great awareness of “APF,” the question will be if the entire mainframe security mission has now been accomplished? Or what’s the next superpower, following “APF,” that mainframe users need to focus on?

Based on our worldwide penetration testing experience, we have determined that “System REXX” and “BCPii” are two further members of the superpower league; both are good candidates for becoming the next “big focus.” In recent years, both z/OS features have been improved so that they are now “easy-to-use” functions. But there is no free lunch. As a consequence, highly critical operations became minimally complex, and you have to “pay” the price for setting up gap-free security measures. User-friendly and easy-to-use superpower features are an invitation to attackers. Complexity is a kind of protection. Compared to assembler programming or disassembling machine code, REXX programming is pretty trivial!

This is why SF-Sherlock focuses intensively on both of these areas. Please feel free to contact us to discuss additional details of what is necessary to properly protect System REXX and BCPii.

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Worldwide toll-free phone number

+800 - 37 333 853
or simply dial:
+800 - DRFEDTKE

Alternatively:
+41 (0)41 710 7444

(+ represents the prefix for international calls; in most countries it is 00, and you have to dial 00800-37333853; in the U.S. it corresponds to 011, and you have to dial 011-800-37333853)

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