Comparing MVS and UNIX Security: The View from the Glass House

For years, the mainstay of corporate computing has been the centralized mainframe—a behemoth caged in a climate-controlled glass house. In most cases, this mainframe is an IBM or IBM-compatible computer running the MVS operating system and operating as either a standalone system or as part of a limited, proprietary network of mainframes within the same organization. Security on these mainframe systems has improved over time, as management has come to understand its importance and as vendors have developed and marketed access control software that is both effective and easy to use. For example, most of these systems operate with one of the major access control packages (IBM's RACF or Computer Associates' CA=ACF2 or CA=Top Secret).