Re: Policies Regarding Old Userids

[Colin Allinson]

Looking at this from a slightly different angle for a moment :-

We have RACF as our ESM and it is set to automatically revoke a user after 180 days of inactivity. Without discussing if this is a good rule (or duration), it does raise an interesting issue.

If our system stays up for more than 180 days (as it often does) then, as far as RACF is concerned, there has been no activity on all the servers that have been quietly logged on and running all that time. So, without any other action, they would all be revoked at the next system IPL.

I have seen various solutions to this (including an automatic recycling of all servers at midnight to tidy up). For us the answer to run a timed process daily to do a RACF RESUME on all userids listed in AUTOLOG2.

I know this is a bit obvious - but obvious things sometimes get missed.

Colin Allinson

Amadeus Data Processing