IBM, one of the world’s largest technology companies said that
it had achieved a breakthrough in security technology that would allow
enterprises from banks to health care companies to retailers to encrypt their
customer data at a large scale.
The New
York-based technology major said its system makes it possible for the first
time to ‘pervasively encrypt’ every level of a network, from applications to
cloud services and databases and prevent theft of information.
This has been
made possible by IBM Z (z14), a next-generation mainframe unveiled by the
company in July. It is capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted
transactions per day.
“Data is the
currency. It is equivalent to the future energy,” said Gururaj S. Rao, IBM
Fellow and vice president, Systems Integrators, IBM z Systems, in an interview.
He said that digitisation was providing value, but was coming with the
challenge of information security as “data theft is on the increase.”
Indian team
IBM, which
reported a revenue of $79.9 billion in 2016, said that its India hardware and
firmware team had made significant contributions to the z14 system and
microprocessor development. It said that more than 100 engineers from its India
labs worked on key components of both the core and the processor in the areas
of logic design, verification, custom circuit design and tool development. The
team has also contributed to the base firmware development, next-generation
input/output enablement and in building newer virtualisation management
capabilities.
One of the key
units designed by the India team is the encryption unit, that gives an
unparalleled security feature to the z14 mainframe, said Mr. Rao.
Known as ‘big
iron’, a mainframe is a high-performance computer used primarily by large
organisations for applications such as credit card payments, flight bookings
and ATM transactions.
Pervasive encryption
Of the more
than nine billion data records lost or stolen since 2013, only 4% were
encrypted, according to IBM. This makes the vast majority of such data
vulnerable to organised cyber crime rings, state actors and employees misusing
access to sensitive information. The company said IBM Z’s new data encryption
capabilities are designed to address the global epidemic of data breaches, a
major factor in the $8 trillion cybercrime impact on the global economy by
2022.
Mr. Raosaid
that data could be travelling, sitting on a cloud device or on the application.
He said the new system could encrypt everything without requiring application
level changes. “Regardless of where the data is, we will protect it. Other than
IBM, no other vendor has been able to do it,” said Mr. Rao, a PhD from Stanford
University.
Another concern
for users is the protection of encryption keys. In large firms, hackers often
target encryption keys, which are routinely exposed in memory as they are used,
the company said.
It said IBM Z
can protect millions of keys, as well as the process of accessing, generating
and recycling them. It does this in ‘tamper responding’ hardware that causes
keys to self-destruct at any sign of intrusion and they can then be
reconstituted in safety.
The Big Blue
said it was now betting big on India to sell its new system to customers such
as the government, large banks and healthcare companies. Viswanath Ramaswamy,
director, Systems, IBM India and South Asia, said that with the growth in
digital transactions in India across banking, finance and government, “our
focus is to work with our ecosystem of partners and developers to deliver these
new capabilities of IBM z14.”.
Source: THE HINDU-6th August,2017
