GSE – Enterprise Security Working Group

Minutes for meeting held on 20th April at CSF London

The meeting was opened by Chairman David McRoberts at 9:30 am

Introduction

David gave a brief run through of the sessions coming up during the day.  Mark Wilson then asked for views around the possibility of having a half-day hands-on workshop at the 2 day conference to be held on 5th/6th October.

Some discussions arose and it was agreed to investigate further as there was some interest shown.

First presentation – Websphere Security – Paul Gover (IBM)

Second presentation – CICS Transaction Gateway – Mark Wilson

Third presentation – Digital Certificates – Nigel Pentland (National Australia)

During Nigel’s presentation there was some debate about a reference made to ICSF and backup.  This can be clarified by saying the use of ICSF makes private keys a one way function.  That is they can only be generated or loaded into ICSF, never exported out.  Once in ICSF they can be backed up, but not exported.  This is a significant limitation to be aware of if you intend to use RACF as a certificate authority, providing private key material, i.e. a PKCS12 export, to other platforms such as Windows and Unix, or for that matter z/OS which doesn’t have ICSF available.

Fourth presentation – Securing Web Services – Adan Heywood (CA)

There was a brief open discussion lead by David McRoberts before the last presentation.  David was asking for suggestions for future direction of the Working Group, including suggestions for themes and or presentation topics that the group would be interested in attending.

Suggestions put forward included:

In addition to suggestions, general feedback and a volunteer for the position of Treasurer are also being actively sought by the committee. 

Fifth presentation – MQ Presentation – Hazel Fix (IBM)

The meeting was closed at 5:30pm.