Friday, January 24, 2014

Security and DB2 LUW

Did you recently start paying more attention to credit card bills? Thinking twice before speaking on the phone or sending a text message? Cutting short on communication with your partner...? Awareness for topics such as privacy and data security has increased dramatically over the past few months. In some industries such as banking, the supervisory authorities - in Germany it is BaFin - have tightened regulations over several years, requiring changes to how databases are set up and administrated, how data can be stored and accessed. As I recently declared 2014 as the year of database security, I thought collecting some related DB2 resources would be a good way to promote it. Here we go...

When you work with DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows, and are researching a topic, then the DB2 Information Center is a good start. It has an entire section on security (look at the navigation section on the left). It explains the DB2 Security Model, various security-related concepts, and has links and background information on some IBM InfoSphere Guardium tools. Many security and auditing tools as well as the Data Encryption (formerly Encryption Expert) product are labeled Guardium.

Other places to visit are the DB2 Best Practices, IBM Redbooks, and IBM developerWorks (list of DB2 security articles). There is a IBM Data Server Security best practices paper and also a redbook "DB2 Security and Compliance Solutions for Linux, UNIX, and Windows". You can also learn about security functionality when attending one of the offered Information Management bootcamps or taking a DB2 class through Learning Services.

Last but least, before I start my weekend, I would like to point to the blog articles I have written on DB2 security topics.

Have a nice weekend and watch your transactions...