Timothy Sipples wrote:
Saturday's Washington Post reports on the woes of CardSystems in Tucson, a
credit card processor. A hacker got access to 40 million credit cards.
MasterCard, Visa, and the FBI are not amused. The article briefly alludes
to how the attack succeeded:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701031.html
According to http://www.cardsystems.com/careers.html (the recruiting page
for the company), CardSystems has the following types of systems
installed:
Microsoft .NET (and Windows servers)
Oracle databases
VMS
Not a single mention of an IBM zSeries system, RACF, CICS, or IMS in all
its job recruiting pages. Which is really too bad, because if they had
been processing credit cards through those systems, chances are that
hacker wouldn't be having as much "fun" right now.
Now, that's not to suggest anyone should rest comfortably. We all face
threats like these, and this is no time to get cocky. But, really, isn't
it best to start with the right tools for the job, to mitigate the risks?
CardSystems will no doubt have some dark weeks and months ahead, and
they'll now have to compete against companies that do use zSeries-based
technologies for processing credit cards. (FISERV and Fidelity come to
mind.) Maybe more IT people need to reassess what works, and business
managers need to carefully evaluate IT risk. As technology becomes ever
more ingrained in business operations, what are the true costs of security
breaches and outages? What systems and software fail less? Are most
resistant to security breaches? And who are the talented IT people than
can address these concerns?
[Speaking for myself.]
Right. And IBM has done the worst job of speaking up.
I sometimes think the folks in Armonk sit around and
chuckle, "Yes, yes, it's going just like we planned!"
After all, if they can get everyone to move off z/OS
but still use mainframes to run Linux, they can get
rid of those expensive software development and
support costs. And, of course, services are where
the biggest profit margins are. "It's nothing personal,
guys, it's just business."
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
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