Book Review:
Mainframe Basics for Security Professionals: Getting Started with RACF
Authors: Ori Pomerantz (Author),
Barbara Vander Weele (Author), Mark E. Nelson (Author), Tim Hahn
(Author)
Publisher: IBM Press; 1 edition
(January 7, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0131738569
ISBN-13: 978-0131738560
http://www.amazon.com/Mainframe-Basics-Security-Professionals-Getting/dp/0131738569
For people who need to start
getting to grips with IBM mainframe security, this is a great book to
start. It is not a an exceptionally large book, and it is not a fully
comprehensive guide, BUT it does provide good explanations of how and
why the fundamental concepts work with RACF. It also is a good
reference since it tells you exectly where to go for additional details
on all the topics.
Chapter 1 and 7 are for background
and context, for people who have been doing security for a while this
is where you may find areas to disagree with, but that is what always
happens with opinion.
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 cover off on
users, data and logging. These are very important chapters and they are
very important for you understand since they explain how these
fundamental ideas work on the mainframe.
Chapters 5 and 6 goes through the
auditing of the mainframe and more complex user setups. These are great
chapters since they explain how to verify your work and how to make it
better.
Personally, I recommend the book
since there are not many ways for a security person to get started with
mainframes in an accessible and useable way - this book is one of them.
Rating: It does what it says on the cover - 4/5