Mainframe House of Horrors

1. An Unhappy Ending
A mainframe job meets an untimely end, and the operator reports an “abend.” Before anyone calls an exorcist, what does that term mean?

2. The Backup from the Crypt
The backup dashboard glows green every night. But when someone asks whether the saved data can actually be restored, the room falls eerily silent. Which activity most directly answers that question?

3. The Account That Wouldn’t Die
An employee left months ago, but their individual account still allows access to company systems. What should have happened as part of their departure?

4. A Very Convincing Costume
An email wearing the IT department’s name demands an immediate password reset through an unfamiliar link. What is the safest response?

5. Night of the Living Batch
The overnight billing job rises on schedule, then collapses with a S0C7 abend. What is the most likely cause?

6. Deadlock at the Cemetery Gates
Two database transactions each hold a lock the other needs. Neither can proceed until the other releases its lock. What is this distinctly unhelpful arrangement called?

7. It Came from Production
A software deployment introduces a serious problem. Before the release, the team prepared and tested a way to reverse the deployment and restore the previous working version. What is that escape route called?

8. The Phantom in the Logs
Investigators want to reconstruct suspicious access attempts captured by the system’s security software. Which information would most directly help establish which user IDs attempted access and when?

9. The Certificate’s Final Hour
A secure connection to a mainframe application fails, and the error message explicitly identifies an expired digital certificate. Which preventive practice most directly addresses this problem?

10. Trick or … Extortion?
Elsewhere in the enterprise, malicious software encrypts files, and a message demands payment for a decryption key. Which unwelcome visitor has arrived?