Sir, First, my apologies .. I picked your response only because I concur with what you’ve said but, in my experience, the very same happened, both as an employee and as a consultant.
Folks, IMHO .. this thread has gone long enough ... before I go on and rant, again, I fully understand and concur w/Eric. The same has been my experience and am sure the same applies to everybody else. I must also state that, when a person starts work at some company, be they an employee or a consultant, limited privileges are given not because they're worried about HACK's but more so, because they do not know the person and want to limit, if not prevent any potential outages. Unfortunately, in today's world, this is a bit like wanting (having?) JAVA, C++ and or VB programmer's on MVS, VM or VSE (there .. I did not say mainframe). If I've offended anybody, please accept my public apology. That said, I've see all kinds of replies to this nonsense all the way from a certain person making reference to the Watergate scandal and OS/390 ... HUH ?? OS/390 in the 70's ??... If true .. I admit that I must really have been asleep. That said, if a 'current' employee (and I don't give a toss if its' a contractor, or employee or the janitor or whatever) does any kind of harm to a company system, I DO NOT consider that to be HACK. By the same token, if one is able to PHYSICALLY be present at (as an example) a datacenter and especially a datacenter that has 'passwords' laying around ... I DO NOT consider that to be HACK. If an 'ex-employee' damaged one's production (or even test) system, I STILL DO NOT consider that a HACK. One comment I'll make is ... my own (rightly or wrongly) differentiation in terminology ... I use the term 'mainframe' to be MVS (or z/OS or whatever you want to call it), VM or VSE. I do like Linux but sorry, z or NO z, it is still not (yet ?) a mainframe. APF libraries ?? give me a break .. I've walked into many places to install and or upgrade a full system (or should I watch my terminology and say ... a full shop). This is to include shops that never had an IBM MAINFRAME before, watched the CE's and FE's roll in the HDW, create a 'brand new' IOCP/CDS and ......... I'm sure there's going to be plenty, especially from the pro-PC folks, that disagree with me and that is fine by me only, if 'ex-employees' and people that should not have access to a system or datacenter does, then ... perhaps it time people shifted their bull away from hard working and extremely knowledgeable developers or systems programmers or whatever have you and started looking VERY closely at this so called 'management' and the 'management infrastructure' everybody insists on. What a wonderful word 'infrastructure'. What was that someone once told me ... umm .. I think about two and a half decades ago .. oh yes ... 'we are going to a paperless' office. Ironically, since the start of that trend, I've seen paperwork, be it in physical paper or electronic forms of paperwork ... quadruple. Again, I digress ... it would yet another long and drawn out topic. One final comment, Radoslaw, if you were an auditor .. great .. but again, there's only two things I can say. One of them being that I do NOT consider anything and everything to be a HACK. The second is that ... despite all the security in the world .. face it ... there is no such thing. If you invent a lock, somebody will find a way to break it, if you invent a storage area, somebody will find a way to get into it. As of the recent, you could have a concrete room built, with no doors, windows or any other means of access, but wait, we now have breaking into that too (yes, I'm leaving out a lot of details but sorry... IMHO.. required). I'm done with this topic. Kind Regards Jim Thomas 617-233-4130 (mobile) 636-294-1014 (res) j...@thethomasresidence.us (Email) -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Bielefeld Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 11:33 AM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: Security is fun in the PC world.... I was a contractor for a company that gave me alter access to APF libraries. I remember my boss at first giving me very limited access. Then, after a few months when he trusted me, he gave me a lot more access. Eric Bielefeld Sr. Systems Programmer ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.S." <r.skoru...@bremultibank.com.pl> > I also know many cases when some contractor(s) did have extraonrdinary > access to the mainframe system, including, i.e. ALTER to APF libraries. On > production LPARs. Is such system still very secure? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1392 / Virus Database: 1520/3848 - Release Date: 08/21/11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
