Mainframe Ransomware: you're compromised, it's time for a detailed recovery plan

 platform to generate and process their core business data. For this reason, the mainframe is a critical platform to protect from cyber attacks. Contrary to common thinking it is exposed to modern threats and vulnerabilities. 

 

In other words, the mainframe is just another computer, coding errors, misconfigurations, weak security controls – all the types of vulnerabilities which plague other platforms such as Linux or Windows are all possible and quite prevalent in the mainframe ecosystem.

One of the increasingly popular types of cyber threat in recent years is the ransomware attack. The mainframe’s massive batch processing capabilities and powerful encryption features, make it a perfect target for ransomware attacks.

Chad Rikansrud is the Director of North American Operations for RSM Partners (www.rsmpartners.com) - a world leader in IBM mainframe security consulting services. Chad is an award-winning speaker, with appearances at: DEF CON, RSA, SHARE, DerbyCon, and other local conferences. Most of Chad's 20-year career has been in technology leadership for the financial services industry where he has held various senior leadership positions, including worldwide datacenter operations, infrastructure and recovery responsibility, as well as enterprise-wide system z storage. His current role has taken him back to his hacker roots, in which he gets to literally hack the Gibson for a living - performing mainframe security assessments, exploit development, and penetration tests for some of the world's largest organizations.

 

Gil is the founder and CEO of Model9. He started his career in the Israeli army computer center, serving as a member of the Mainframe cyber security team in the systems department, where he became deeply familiar with Mainframe system internals, vulnerabilities and protection techniques. Gil worked for 7 years at the IBM ITSO center in Poughkeepsie where he co-authored 8 IBM Redbooks on z/OS implementation, worked with large customers on implementation of new functions in z/OS and taught numerous classes on z/OS systems programming. Gil later moved to the IBM Research lab in Haifa to work on Mainframe storage development. Gil stayed in the storage domain, working in storage development at XIV and then Infinidat, until starting Model9 in 2016.