Security

Security is an extremely important and fast-changing subject considering the number of security attacks and new technologies entering our computing world every day. An e-business must provide assurance that the infrastructure and application resources, including systems, networks, and data, are protected with regard to confidentiality and integrity. This includes protecting the enterprise network and systems from various forms of attack. It also requires that the communications between the consumer and the application are secure and confidential.

The IBM® i platform provides comprehensive solution capabilities for a highly secure system environment. Sophisticated technologies combine to minimize the potential risk posed by security threats, while better enabling you to rapidly adapt and respond to changing security policy requirements. The following lists some of these technologies, divided under various categories:
Logging and auditing
The IBM i provides logging facilities to track the activity occurring on the system – the security audit journal, the system history log, message queues, and journals, just to name a few.
Confidentiality and integrity
The IBM i offers both software cryptography and a family of cryptographic hardware options for protecting data and for securing transaction processing. DB2® also includes encryption and decryption functions. Object signing and signature verification are security capabilities that you can employ to verify the integrity of a variety of objects.
Network security
The IBM i supports network security features such as intrusion detection, SSL, IP packet filtering , and virtual private networking (VPN).
Authentication
The IBM i supports a variety of authentication methods, including digital certificates, IBM Tivoli® Directory Server for IBM i (LDAP), and Enterprise Identity Mapping (EIM).

In addition to the technologies listed above, application servers, such as the HTTP Server and WebSphere® Application Server, implement additional security features based on protocols and standards.