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Mainframes: The AI Glow-Up

Mainframes: The AI Glow-Up

Legacy mainframes remain one of the most underestimated parts of enterprise architecture in large-scale organizations. Every second, they process thousands of transactions, store data, and handle operations.  There are still many businesses, including data-critical...

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What’s Inside – Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

What’s Inside – Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

The latest Tuning Letter, 2025 No.3, is out now! Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest issue, 2025 No.3, on our Tuning Letter website. If you are not a current Tuning Letter subscriber, check the website for information about subscription...

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IT Security is Business-Critical: And I Hate it…

IT Security is Business-Critical: And I Hate it…

Okay, that's it - I hate IT security. And I really think that many folks in IT are actually like Mordac, the Preventer of IT, from the Dilbert comic strip. Okay, that’s not fair... Allow me to back up just a bit to explain where I'm coming from. Recently, one of my...

Security complacency: is your mainframe at risk?

Security complacency: is your mainframe at risk?

This has been a fine summer. And I’m not talking about the weather: I mean the whopping fines proposed for infringements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by Marriott Hotels and British Airways, followed by an even bigger fine in the US for Equifax –...

Summer – the season for cyber attacks

Summer – the season for cyber attacks

Keeping your mainframe secure is probably one of your top priorities. You’re looking at cryptography and introducing multi-factor authentication (MFA). You may even be running SIEM software to keep up-to-date with what’s happening on your mainframe (and elsewhere)....

Breach recovery – the fast and the furious!

Breach recovery – the fast and the furious!

Your organization has had a data breach. You’ve managed to confirm that it’s not a false alarm, it really is an issue. And now you need to recover from it. What do you do? The US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has produced...

Securing data in transit

Securing data in transit

One way of looking at mainframe data is that it is either at rest or in transit. Data at rest is data that is not actively moving from device to device or network to network such as data stored on DASD or tape or some other way. Sometimes, data at rest is thought to...

Pervasive encryption concerns

Pervasive encryption concerns

In today’s treacherous world of constant hacking threats and corresponding data breaches, IT security and breach prevention has become a top-line concern for everyone in large IT organizations. With over six million data records lost or stolen every day – that’s...

Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-Factor Authentication

There was a time when mainframes were in a world of their own, separated from other computing platforms. A world where even the mainframe staff seldom mixed with the distributed people, and managers had no idea what the mainframe did or how it did it. People who...

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Business-Driven Automation, AI Confidence Outpaces Readiness, and more

Newest Virtel Release, SHARE Orlando Tickets, and more

VIRTEL announces release of Virtel 4.63: a major new version to better connect, secure, and simplify access to any mainframe application SHARE Orlando Early Bird Tickets Available Hitachi Vantara's Virtual Storage Platform One Wins CRN 2025 Products of the Year Award...

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❓What 2025 Taught Us About Mainframes: A Trivia Quiz

❓What 2025 Taught Us About Mainframes: A Trivia Quiz

As the year closes, and the year-end reflections roll in, we’re taking a closer look at key findings from the latest BMC, Kyndryl, and Planet Mainframe Arcati surveys. The results point to a platform that is evolving in response to cost pressures, skills gaps,...

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Mainframe Miscellaneous Trivia!

Mainframe Miscellaneous Trivia!

As the year draws to a close (whether your days are growing shorter and darker or longer and brighter), December tends to invite a little reflection. Over the past year, Planet Mainframe Trivia has dished out a veritable smorgasbord of topics, from the early days of...

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More Mainframe Lingo Trivia

More Mainframe Lingo Trivia

Mainframe environments come with their own vocabulary, much of it precise, legacy-rich, and completely opaque to anyone who hasn’t spent time in the ecosystem. And there really is no end to the alphabet soup. Even seasoned professionals pick up new terms over the...

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