Worried about cyber crime and hacking? Cloud vulnerability?

To counter these concerns, IBM is rolling out IBM Z, a new transaction system that Big Blue says is capable of processing “more than 12 billion encrypted transactions” a day. That capacity makes it the world’s most powerful, the tech giant claims.

Z also enables encryption of data associated with “any application, cloud service or database all the time.”

The announcement made early today comes just ahead of IBM’s latest earnings report, which is set for Tuesday.

“The new IBM Z, deeply integrated with IBM Security software, was designed to automate and dramatically streamline security and compliance processes,” writes Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Z, in a blog post.

“For example, auditors are expected to manually inspect and validate the security of databases, applications and systems. Organizations can now immediately demonstrate that data within the scope of compliance is protected and the keys are secure. This can reduce the mounting complexity and cost of compliance. The system also provides an audit trail showing if and when permissioned insiders accessed data.”

Mauri says IBM worked with “more than 150 clients who cited data protection as their biggest challenge and concern.”

The “encryption engine, as he calls it, ” offers solutions “inexpensively and easily without application changes.”

“Banks and others in the financial services industry process thousands of transactions per second to keep the global economy running,” he explains.

“To help these organizations more effectively compete in the cloud era, enormous amounts of sensitive data produced by transactions can now have better protection against fraud and cybercrime, and be analyzed and monetized using IBM Z – without causing disruption of day-to-day operations. For banks, this means encryption at the click of a button – even while applications are running – and the ability to migrate data from unencrypted to encrypted without impacting service level agreements.”

According to IBM, encryption is crucial to combating data breaches.

“Of the more than nine billion data records lost or stolen since 2013, only four percent were encrypted, making the vast majority of such data vulnerable to organized cybercrime rings, state actors and employees misusing access to sensitive information,” the company says.

“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,” Mauri says. “We created a data protection engine for the cloud era to have a significant and immediate impact on global data security.”

Highlights of Z, according to IBM:

  • Pervasive encryption of data – all the time. .
  • Tamper-responding encryption keys.
  • Encrypted APIs.
  • Creates the Most Secure Blockchain Service

Read more at:

https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8013251-ibm-z-mainframe-data-protection/

IBM operates one of its most modern cloud data centers in RTP where it also maintains one of its largest corporate campuses. The tech firm employs several thousand people across the state.