Managed FTP for z/OS:
Automation, Auditing, Security, Monitoring

by Anura Guruge, August 2007

Inside the SFM FTP white paper:

• Unmanaged FTP...
• violates the basic tenets of mainframe operations,
• compromises the integrity of mission-critical data,
• unnecessarily depletes mainframe MIPS,
• undermines enterprise security.
• z/OS FTP without an additional layer of management creates a glaring, easily exploited vulnerability
• Unmanaged FTP is but an easy-to-find, unlocked, and unguarded backdoor into your mainframe.

FTP Management transforms standard z/OS FTP into a true mainframe-caliber utility!

Excerpts from the white paper:

z/OS, via its Communications Server suite, provides a full-fledged, standards-compliant FTP capability with multi-IP stack support--that is noted for its robustness and scalability.

The FTP client contains an API which can be used to programmatically drive the client as well as to minutely monitor its operations--on a command-by-command basis, if required. Appropriate ancillary software is, however, needed to take advantage of this FTP client API.

There is no equivalent API currently available for the z/OS FTP server--though, with ingenuity, the server's post-processing EXIT routines may be used to extract some comparable operations-monitoring data. Again this requires 3rd-party software.

In order to have the necessary automation, monitoring and management, z/OS customers have no choice but to implement an ancillary "FTP Manager." Such a FTP manager, if well architected, will gainfully exploit, synthesize and augment the IBM-provided FTP management "hooks" and "stubs," such as NMI, the client API and server EXITS, to ensure that z/OS FTP can truly qualify as a mainframe-class, managed service.

The SDS FTP Manager (SFM), the focus of this white paper, is a good example of a well-architected, state-of-the-art z/OS FTP manager. SFM, as will be shown, adroitly addresses FTP automation, security, auditing and monitoring.

The bottom line here is that standard z/OS FTP is robust and scalable, but woefully inadequate management is its undeniable Achilles' heel. Hence the immediate justifiable need for a product such as SFM in order to transform z/OS FTP into a managed resource.

Take the relatively simple, but very typical, z/OS FTP batch job example shown on page 5... continued...(click here, *.pdf, 1,200 kb)

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