Allegro: SAFE/3000 Overview

SAFE/3000 Overview

Today the HP e3000 is used to store and process vital information for businesses worldwide. The information stored in and the computing resources of these systems have become valuable commodities, in many cases essential to the continued success of an organization.

Until recently, the HP e3000 was often used as a stand-alone minicomputer running a small number of applications for a limited number of users. The minimal security provided by MPE and third-party packages was adequate in this limited environment. However, today the HP e3000 has evolved into a general purpose system running a diverse set of applications for large user populations. Today's HP e3000, especially given the introduction of the 900 Series of processors, can outperform yesterday's, and some of today's, mainframe systems.

Unfortunately, the security technology needed to ensure a secure computing environment on these HP e3000s has not evolved along with the system's power and use. Access, alteration, or misappropriation of sensitive information along with the loss of system resources, and processing capability can have a severe, if not crippling, effect on the users and organizations who depend on their HP e3000 for accurate and reliable information.

Many challenges face all users of the system, from end users through system managers to corporate management. These challenges boil down to the need to adequately protect computing resources, while still allowing access to resources on the system.

SAFE/3000 addresses these challenges by providing for the HP e3000 a set of access control and auditing tools which have previously been available only on larger IBM main frame systems. SAFE/3000 provides security services in several areas:

Prevention of unauthorized access at both the system and file/database level.
Control of authorized access at both the system and file/database level.
Verification of authorized system and file/database access through an integrated audit facility.
Detection of unauthorized access attempts at both the system and file/database level through the audit facility.

These services are provided by SAFE/3000 through access control mechanisms, audit facilities, and system level security controls.

With SAFE/3000, files may be accessed by multiple users in a secure and auditable manner. SAFE/3000 allows the owner of a file or database to control who may access the file or database by:

specific user-ID,
MPE access mode (Read, Write, Update, etc.),
what program is being used to access the data,
time of day the file or database is being accessed,
day of week on which the access occurs,
date on which access happens, and
what terminal or terminals are being used to access the file.

In addition to controlling access to regular MPE flat files, SAFE/3000 may also be used to regulate access to TurboIMAGE databases and KSAM files as well as controlling the use of system resources such as logon-ids and terminals.

This level of control and validation is not available from either the MPE operating system or other third-party packages. These constraints may be used individually or in combination to fully specify access. SAFE/3000's comprehensive access controls ensure that authorized access by users on the system occurs in a controlled and verifiable manner, and that unauthorized access is prevented.

SAFE/3000's access rule facility provides this level of control. Access rules allow the owner of a file to specify with a high-level English-like syntax how a file is to be accessed by other users. The access rule facility is a simple yet powerful control mechanism which can be used not only at the file level, but also to describe how access is to be granted at the system level where a user logs on.

For more information or a free demo of the product, contact us at info@allegro.com or (408) 252-2330.