Cyber Security Month
Mainframe Security Isn’t What It Used to Be – How CICS and LE Are Fighting Back
This article updates a 2022 piece in Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, “LE Non-Executable HEAPS and CICS User Experiences” by Mario Bezzi. Current Tuning Letter subscribers can read the original article online. Think your mainframe is immune to modern cyber threats?...
Time to Rethink Db2 Disaster Recovery
For a long time, disaster recovery (DR) in Db2 z/OS environments was mostly about getting systems back online after a major outage. Whether it was a hardware failure, a data center problem, or a natural disaster, the focus was on full system recovery, bringing the...
Cyber Security Awareness Trivia
October is Cyber Security Awareness month at Planet Mainframe, so over here at Trivia Challenge we’ll be focusing our trivia topics on the ever-evolving topic of mainframes and cybersecurity. Mainframes have long been the backbone of critical industries, particularly...
Fortify Your Legacy Systems
A Digitalised State We live in a hyperconnected cyberworld driven by AI and machine learning. The age of digitalisation influences how we behave. In this world, it is all too easy for states, corporations, or criminals to overreach and access information they should...
Ransomware isn’t really a problem, is it?
Even the news channels don’t make a big deal about cyberattacks these days. It’s happening all the time. It’s incredible how many people don’t recognize that there is a war going on right now between hackers and organizations with any kind of IT hardware. And when I...
The Mainframe is Not Secure
October is cybersecurity awareness month, and Planet Mainframe is kicking it off with interview insights from Mark Wilson, Technical Director at mainframe services company Vertali and Conference Manager for GSE UK. "Is the mainframe secure? No. But it is...
Get ready for DORA
In my last article about ransomware, I mentioned how important it was for chief financial officers (CFOs) to ensure that the IT in their organizations was as secure as possible—particularly now that attacks can come from artificial intelligence (AI) bots that could be...
Understanding Downtime – Quantifying the Impact of Mainframe Outages and the Value of Observability
No matter what your business is, chances are good that at least part of it is completed online. Whether that is records management, payroll, or customer purchases, the online portion of your business is most likely a very critical component of overall success. That is...
Latest
What You Said – (ClownStrike) CloudStrike
According to The Guardian, the Crowdstrike outage crashed an estimated 1% of all Windows PCs worldwide—or about 8.5 million—and is estimated to have cost the US Fortune 500 USD $5 billion. We asked you, Planet Mainframe readers, to share your thoughts on the...
Share Your Thoughts — What Does a Global Blackout Mean for Mainframe Companies?
Calling Crowdstrike’s global technology outage “inconvenient” is the understatement of the year. From airlines to banking, 9-1-1 emergency services to grocery stores, and hospitals to telecommunications, millions are maddeningly stuck. The technology blackout began...
The Most Important Part for Cybersecurity
The relationship between education and security The digital age is a double-edged sword. While it offers unprecedented connectivity and innovation, it also presents a vast and ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. From the devastating "mother of all breaches" in...
Cybersecurity in the Age of IoT: Safeguarding the Internet of Things
The emergence of the Internet of Things, or IoT, as it’s commonly known, has been a massive boon to just about every aspect of our society. It allows a multitude of physical objects in our everyday lives to connect us to the Internet. Popular products include home...
Total Network Failure on your Production System – What are the Chances?
Perhaps higher than you may think. Total loss of network connectivity is a critical event that can be hard to diagnose and recover from, especially if the systems specialists cannot connect to the system. The three mostly likely causes for total network failure on a...
Surveys, security and spaghetti
Mark Wilson reflects on the findings of a recent mainframe survey, explaining why security should be the number one priority, and why we need to start talking about complexity and observability. I read with interest the highlights of the Arcati Mainframe survey 2024,...
Vertali zTrust: Detect Network Activity and Control Traffic to Enhance Cybersecurity and Compliance
Vertali’s zTrust is a unique software solution that dramatically reduces the time, effort and costs needed to secure your operations and prove compliance with data standards and industry regulations. zTrust reveals network activity to and from your mainframe,...
Ransomware Attacks and your Health
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more common place, and many people have used things like ChatGPT, a popular generative AI (GenAI) that can answer questions, write essays and poems, or summarize a book. However, like most things, AI can also be turned to the...
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Upcoming Events
IDUG EMEA 2025
Dusseldorf, GermanyIDUG will be taking place in Dusseldorf for the 2025 EMEA Db2 Tech Conference! Experience the custom Solution Center, workshops & hands-on labs, IBM’s certification & badging opportunities, as well […]
GSUK In-person Conference 25
The GSUK In-person Conference 25 is the leading independent Mainframe user event in the United Kingdom, bringing together hundreds of professionals, vendors, and thought leaders from across the enterprise IT landscape. Taking […]
Virtual IMS User Group | IMS Managed ACB Mandate After 6 Months – Adapting to the New Normal
Zoom - Virtual MeetingIMS Managed ACB Mandate After 6 Months – Adapting to the New Normal Six months after the IMS Managed ACB mandate, the landscape for IMS administrators and DBAs has fundamentally […]
Virtual CICS User Group | November 13, 2025
Zoom - Virtual MeetingRegistrations are available here!
Observability and Resiliency Trivia
At Planet Mainframe, September is the month that we pay special attention to two critical pillars of modern mainframe operations — observability and resiliency. Observability goes beyond traditional monitoring by providing deep insights into applications,...
Strategic partnership announcements, Mainframe integrations with Enterprise IT, and more
PopUp Mainframe and TES Enterprise Solutions Announce PartnershipBMC AMI Portfolio July 2025 ReleaseVertali Expands ‘New To Z’ ProgramIBM 2025 Cost of a Data Breach ReportNew release alert: IBM Ansible Core v1.15.0-beta.1 now availableMainframe Book Club Dives Into...
Mainframe Firsts
Mainframes have a reputation for being rock-solid, reliable…and maybe a little mysterious (to outsiders at least). But behind the green screens and acronyms lies a rich history of innovation that has shaped the modern computing world. From groundbreaking hardware...
Announcements at SHARE, Job-Ready Talent training, and more
IBM and Arivonix Announce Deep watsonx.ai Integration at SHARE Cleveland YUPRO Placement and Franklin Skills Launch SKILLSFIT™ to Deliver Job-Ready IT Talent, Filling Urgent Gaps Hitachi Vantara Recognized by GigaOm for Innovation in Object Storage Royal Cyber Unveils...
A Decade in Purple Chucks: Celebrating Planet Mainframe
When a group of mainframers started a part-time mainframe blog 10 years ago, they never imagined it would become a leading website for mainframe industry news. For over a decade, we’ve shared ideas, explored new innovations, and highlighted the people shaping the...
Join Planet Mainframe at SHARE Cleveland for Trivia, Prizes, and More
Next week, SHARE is taking over Cleveland, Ohio, and we’re bringing the party to Booth #612! If you’re going to be there, here’s what we’ve got planned: Look for these friendly faces: Amanda Hendley, Mark Wilson, and Penney Berryman Celebrating the 2025 Influential...