The new IBM Z is capable not only of running more than 12-billion encrypted transactions per day, it also features an encryption engine that, for the first time, makes it possible to pervasively encrypt data associated with any application, cloud service or database all the time.
IBM Z’s new data encryption capabilities are designed to address the global epidemic of data breaches, a major factor in the $8-trillion cybercrime impact on the global economy by 2022.
Of the more than 9-billion data records lost or stolen since 2013, only 4% were encrypted, making the majority of such data vulnerable to organised cybercrime rings, state actors and employees misusing access to sensitive information.
In the most significant re-positioning of mainframe technology in more than a decade, when the platform embraced Linux and open source software, IBM Z now dramatically expands the protective cryptographic umbrella of the world’s most advanced encryption technology and key protection.
The system’s advanced cryptographic capability now extends across any data, networks, external devices or entire applications – such as the IBM Cloud Blockchain service – with no application changes and no impact on business service level agreements.
“The vast majority of stolen or leaked data today is in the open and easy to use because encryption has been very difficult and expensive to do at scale,” says Ross Mauri, GM for IBM Z. “We have created a data protection engine for the cloud era to have a significant and immediate impact on global data security.”
A recent study found that extensive use of encryption is a top factor in reducing the business impact and cost of a data breach. To put that in context, the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index reported that more than 4-billion records were leaked in 2016 (a 556% increase from 2015).
However, encryption is often largely absent in corporate and cloud data centres because current solutions for data encryption in x86 environments can dramatically degrade performance (and thus user experience), and can be too complex and expensive to manage. As a result, only about two percent of corporate data is encrypted today, while more than 80% of mobile device data is encrypted.
IBM Z pervasive encryption reflects a call to action on data protection articulated by chief information security officers and data security experts worldwide, and more than 150 IBM clients around the world who participated and provided feedback in IBM Z’s system design over three years.
As a result of this collaboration, IBM Z brings significant advances in cryptography technology, building on a proven encryption platform that safeguards the world’s banking, healthcare, government and retail systems. IBM Z pervasive encryption delivers breakthroughs including:
* Pervasive encryption of data – all the time. IBM Z makes it possible, for the first time, for organizations to pervasively encrypt data associated with an entire application, cloud service or database in flight or at rest with one click. The standard practice today is to encrypt small chunks of data at a time, and invest significant labor to select and manage individual fields. This bulk encryption at cloud scale is made possible by a massive 7-times increase in cryptographic performance over the previous generation z13 – driven by a 4x increase in silicon dedicated to cryptographic algorithms. This is 18-times faster compared to x86 systems (that today only focus on limited slices of data) and at just five percent of the cost compared to x86-based solutions.
* Tamper-responding encryption keys. A top concern for organizations is protection of encryption keys. In large organizations, hackers often target encryption keys, which are routinely exposed in memory as they are used. Only IBM Z can protect millions of keys (as well as the process of accessing, generating and recycling them) in “tamper responding” hardware that causes keys to be invalidated at any sign of intrusion and can then be reconstituted in safety. The IBM Z key management system is designed to meet Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Level 4 standards, where the norm for high security in the industry is Level 2. This IBM Z capability can be extended beyond the mainframe to other devices, such as storage systems and servers in the cloud. In addition, IBM Secure Service Container protects against insider threats from contractors and privileged users, provides automatic encryption of data and code in-flight and at-rest, and tamper-resistance during installation and runtime.
* Encrypted APIs. IBM z/OS Connect technologies can make it easy for cloud developers to discover and call any IBM Z application or data from a cloud service, or for IBM Z developers to call any cloud service. IBM Z now allows organizations to encrypt these APIs – the digital glue that links services, applications and systems – nearly 3x faster compared to alternatives based on x86 systems.
“The pervasive encryption that is built into, and is designed to extend beyond, the new IBM Z really makes this the first system with an all-encompassing solution to the security threats and breaches we’ve been witnessing in the past 24 months,” says Peter Rutten, analyst at IDC’s Servers and Compute Platforms Group.
IBM Z, deeply integrated with IBM Security software, automates and dramatically streamline security and compliance processes. For example, auditors are expected to manually inspect and validate the security of databases, applications and systems.
Organisations can now immediately demonstrate that data within of scope of compliance is protected and the keys are secure. This can significantly reduce the mounting complexity and cost of compliance for auditors. The system also provides an audit trail showing if and when permissioned insiders accessed data.
IBM also announced three new Container Pricing models for IBM Z, providing clients greatly simplified software pricing that combines flexible deployment with competitive economics vs. public clouds and on-premises x86 environments:
* New microservices and applications that enable clients to maximise the value from security-rich on-premises enterprise systems in real time. Clients can now co-locate applications to optimise qualities of services that are priced competitively with public cloud and on-premises platforms.
* Application development and test with the freedom to triple capacity of all development environments on z/OS to support latest DevOps tooling and processes. Clients can triple capacity with no increase in monthly license charge.
* Payment systems pricing based on the business metric of payments volume a bank processes, not the available capacity. This gives clients much greater flexibility to innovate affordably in a competitive environment, particularly in the fast-growing Instant Payment segment.
IBM mainfraes already support 87% of all credit card transactions and nearly $8-trillion payments a year, 29-billion ATM transactions each year, worth nearly $5-billion per day, 4-billion passenger flights each year; more than 30-billion transactions per day – more than the number of Google searches every day; and 68% of the world’s production workloads at only 6% of the total IT cost.
The IBM Z, the next generation of IBM’s industry-leading CMOS mainframe technology, features the industry’s fastest microprocessor, running at 5.2GHz, and a new scalable system structure that delivers up to a 35 percent capacity increase for traditional workloads and up to a 35% capacity increase for Linux workloads compared to the previous generation IBM z13.
The system can support:
* More than 12-billion encrypted transactions per day on a single system.
* The world’s largest MongoDB instance with 2,5-times faster NodeJS performance than x86-based platforms.
* 2-million Docker Containers.
* 1 000 concurrent NoSQL databases.
Other new capabilities include:
hree times the memory of the z13 for faster response times, greater throughput and accelerated analytics performance. With 32Tb of memory, IBM Z offers one of the largest memory footprints in the industry.
* Three times faster I/O and accelerated transaction processing compared to the z13 to drive growth in data, transaction throughput and lower response time.
•The ability to run Java workloads 50% faster than x86 alternatives.
* Industry-leading Storage Area Network response time with zHyperLink, delivering 10-times latency reduction compared to the z13 and cutting application response time in half – enabling businesses to do much more work such as real-time analytics or interact with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cloud applications within the same transaction, without changing a single line of application code.
As part of the announcement, IBM also previewed new z/OS software that provides foundational capabilities for private cloud service delivery, enabling a transformation from an IT cost center to a value-generating service provider. When available, these capabilities will include the support of workflow extensions for IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS and real-time SMF analytics infrastructure support.
IBM repositions the mainframe
