The industry just gained another ally in the global fight against cybercrime with the launch of the new IBM z14 mainframe.

With close to 70 percent of the world’s largest businesses — including those in banking, health care, insurance and retail — running on mainframes, IBM z not only increases power and speed to handle enormous transactions, but also introduces pervasive encryption to dramatically improve data protection and regulatory compliance.

Expanding and Extending Encryption

Until now, encryption has been largely absent in data and cloud centers — only 2 percent of corporate data is encrypted today — because current solutions dramatically degrade performance, and are too complex and expensive to manage.

IBM z changes that by expanding and extending encryption and key protection across data, networks, external devices and entire applications. It does this without any software changes or disruption to business applications and operations.

The Ponemon Institute’s “2017 Cost of Data Breach Study” found that extensive use of encryption is a top factor in reducing the cost of a data breach, resulting in a $17 decrease in cost per lost or stolen record and an average cost of $141 per lost record. Capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day, IBM z makes it possible, for the first time, to encrypt all data associated with any application, cloud service or database, all the time.

Automated Auditing

The other driving factor is the increase in regulations by governments around the world aimed at protecting information, including the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect next year. The GDPR will require organizations to report data breaches within 72 hours or face fines of up to 4 percent of annual revenue. Under the new law, organizations will have to demonstrate that data is encrypted and keys are protected.

For the first time, IBM z automates the process of verifying that data is encrypted and keys are secure. It offers real-time, self-service verification of protection and encryption, and provides an audit trail showing whether permissioned insiders accessed data. This significantly reduces the time and effort required to meet compliance obligations and complete audits. It also removes entire classes of data and users from the compliance scope.

A Comprehensive Data Protection Strategy

In addition to pervasive encryption capabilities, IBM z integrates additional security solutions to enhance your overall security posture and establish a trusted digital experience by:

• Measuring compliance with regulations using IBM Security zSecure Audit;
• Enforcing segregation of duties and monitoring privileged users with IBM Security Identity Governance and Intelligence;
• Preventing outsiders from impersonating trusted insiders with IBM Multi-Factor Authentication for z/OS;
• Discovering, protecting, encrypting and monitoring sensitive data with IBM Security Guardium; and
• Enhancing security intelligence and automating security event analysis to detect threats on an enterprisewide basis with IBM QRadar.

These solutions work with pervasive encryption to provide comprehensive data security capabilities to protect your information. The digital economy relies on this trusted information that resides on your mainframe.

Learn More about how pervasive encryption provides an IBM Trusted Digital Experience