SPARTA News

April 2018

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Randy Springs

Our speaker this month will be Ed Webb, Technical Lead for Mainframe in IT at SAS. Ed will report on his recent participation at SHARE in Sacramento in March 2018.

Please plan to join your colleagues for subs, networking, and education on Tuesday, April 3 at 6:15 p.m. at our usual LabCorp location.

Randy Springs
BB&T

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

Apr. 3, 2018 - SHARE Conference Report by Ed Webb of SAS

May 1, 2018 - CICS Updates by Dan Zachary of IBM

June 5, 2018 - IOF Update by Jim Ott of Triangle Systems

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2017-2018 SPARTA

Board of Directors

Randy Springs - President

BB&T                  (919) 745-5241

3200 Beechleaf Court, Suite 300

Raleigh, NC 27604

Ron Pimblett - Vice President

MDI Data Systems

Land line 613 599 6970

Mobile 613 981 6919

190 Guelph Private

Kanata, ON K2T 0J7

Chris Blackshire - Secretary

Retired (Dell, Perot Systems, Nortel)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Durham, NC 27713

Randy Springs - (Acting) Treasurer

BB&T                  (919) 745-5241

see Randy

Springs earlier

Ed Webb -  Communications Director

SAS Institute Inc.  919-531-4162

SAS Campus Drive

Cary, NC 27513

Mike Lockey -  Web Master

Guilford Co. Information Services  336-641-6235

201 N. Eugene St.

Greensboro, NC 27401

Meetings

Meetings are scheduled for the first Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in January), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building (1912 T.W. Alexander Drive). In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

January 2018 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V495 (dated January 15, 2018) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the March 6, 2018 Meeting

• The meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Randy Springs, the SPARTA President.

• The meeting was held at a LabCorp conference room in RTP, N.C.

• Sixteen (16) people were present of which Fourteen (14) are 2017/2018 paid members.

• Everyone introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions or their job hunting challenges.

OLD BUSINESS

• The minutes of the February 6, 2018 meeting as published in the March 2018 Newsletter was approved.

• The February 28, 2018 Treasurer's report was approved as published in the March 2018 newsletter. The balance was $623.52. (See details later in this newsletter).

• Call For Articles: Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

• The SPARTA Web page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

• Randy reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.

• Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

• The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at LabCorp in RTP.

• Food for the April 3 meeting will be BarBQ.

• The 2018 dues are due ($30) starting in February 2018. Please pay Randy Springs.

• Thanks to LabCorp and Bill Johnson for hosting the meeting.

• There are currently 76 people on the SPARTA-RTP e-mail list.

• Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv. You will be added by the moderator (Chris = SPARTA-RTP-owner@yahoogroups.com) sending you an invitation to Join the list.

• No update from Randy Springs on the SPARTA website connection to LinkedIn.

• Chris is in the process of putting a package together for Brad Carson, Tommy Thomas, and John Bryan's SPARTA contributions and death information on the web page under a new Emeritus section.

NEW BUSINESS

• Randy Springs will be taking over the Treasurer's duties until a replacement for Pam Tant can be found.

-The treasurer position duties are:
--Collect dues and pay expenses at each monthly meeting.
--Deposit income at the BB&T bank monthly.
--Make an updated monthly excel income-expense list for the monthly newsletter.
--Give a Treasurer report at each meeting.
--One Time: Be added to the checking account authorization.
-Contact Randy Springs if you are interested.

• SPARTA would need a security certificate to change the website to HTTPS access. A certificate will be $75 per year from GoDaddy. Randy Springs will work with Mike Lockey to research if we need this option and how to change it.

• LabCorp is moving the data center out of the building that we meet in sometime between July and November. After that, Bill Johnson may not have access to this building. That means we may have to find a new meeting place. Bill will keep us up to date as he finds out more about the LabCorp moving/access plans.

• Presentation Topic: CorreLog's Real-Time zDefender Technology for z/OS (SIEM)
By Brian Cain and Peter Mills of CorreLog, Inc.

• About CorreLog, Inc.
- Privately-held, founded in 2008
- US-based; corporate headquarters in Naples, FL
- Operations: North America, South America, EMEA, APAC
- More than 1000 customers worldwide:
- - End-User, OEM, MSSP
- - All sizes: 2 - 40,000+ monitored devices
- - Governmental: DOI, US Treasury, Veterans Admin, DOD, State Governments
- - Commercial: Mutual of Omaha, BCBS, very large US/UK banks, credit card companies, Tailored Brands, Motorola
- Strategic Technology Partnerships with IBM, Micro Focus, McAfee, RSA, CA, ASG, Compuware, Action Software, +

• About CorreLog Products
- Our focus is multi-platform SIEM:
- - Real-Time Threat Detection
- - Database Activity & File Integrity Monitoring of Sensitive datasets: e.g. SYS1.*, APF, RACF Levels etc.
- - User/Entity Behavior Analysis
- - File upload/download - FTP
- - File upload/download - IND$FILE
- - IP Reputation Feeds
- - Single Visualization Console for all mainframe event messages

• CorreLog zDefender for z/OS - Architecture
- LPAR - Agent - API - zDefender TCP/IP Receiver - z/VM - VM RACF, Console Messages VM:Secure
- LPAR - Agent - API - dbDefender for IMS
- LPAR - Agent - API - The Internet and/or your internal network - CorreLog Visualizer or Standard console
- LPAR - Agent - API - 3^rd Party SMF Recs: Compuware, Action Software, etc.
- All sharing the same parameter file

• Some customer volume examples:
Customer* - - LPARs - - Message Count - - - Unit Time - - - Mssg/Sec
- - - A - - - - - - 47 - - - - - - 60,000,000 - - - - - - Day - - - - - - - 694
- - - B - - - - - - 68 - - - - - 280,000,000 - - - - - - Day - - - - - - 3,241**
* - two large mainframe customers
** - one SIEM server instance

• SIEM Extensive Live Demo

• Thumb Drive Content
- CorreLog_8-Guidelines-for-Mainframe-PC-DSS-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_11-Steps-Mainframe-Security-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_Agent-Collector-QRadar-Executive-Summary
- CorreLog_Case_Study_Mutual-Insurance-Provider
- CorreLog_Craig S. Mullins_Database-Access Auditing-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_Craig S. Mullins_Data-Access-Auditing-Requirements-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_dbDefender for IMS-Datasheet
- CorreLog_dbDefender-for-DB2-Datasheet
- CorreLog_FISMA-Executive-Summary
- CorreLog_FISMA-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_GDPR Datasheet_Score Card
- CorreLog_GDPR Whitepaper
- CorreLog_Mainframe-FIM-Whitepaper
- CorreLog_PCI-DSS-Compliance-Guide
- CorreLog_Splunk-Executive-Summary
- CorreLog_Technical-Paper_DB2
- CorreLog_zDefender-Visual-Datasheet
- CorreLog_zDedender-zOS-Dataset
- CorreLog_The Anatomy of a Mainframe Hack

• The presentation and Demonstration ended about 9:50 PM.

• Contact Info:
Brian Cain
Account Executive CorreLog, Inc
Email: Brian.Cain@CorreLog.com
Office: 877-Correlog x413
Mobile: 239-839-8627

Peter Mills
Vice President Development & Support CorreLog
Email: Peter.Mills@CorreLog.com
Office: 877-CorreLog x408
Mobile: 239-290-2809

• Presentation Access - See SPARTA webpage for the complete presentation.

• The March 6, 2018 monthly meeting ended about 9:50 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for March 2018

contributed by Pam Tant

The balance in the account is $623.52 as of February 28, 2018.

SPARTA Financial Report
3/01/2017 through 02/28/2018

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2018

contributed by Chris Blackshire

April 3, 2018 - BarBQ
May 1, 2018 - Pizza
June 5, 2018 - Fried chicken
July 10, 2018 - Subs (date changed because of the July 4 holiday)
August 7, 2018 - BarBQ
September 11, 2018 - Pizza (date changed because of the Labor Day holiday)
October 2, 2018 - Fried chicken
November 6, 2018 - Subs
December 4, 2018 - BarBQ

Register Now for SHARE in St. Louis and Plan for its 2019 Meetings

Contributed By Ed Webb

Start working now on getting to SHARE in St. Louis, Missouri August 12-17, 2018. Early registration ends Monday, June 25, 2018. And yes, for the first time in 7 years (15 SHARE conferences), the registration fees have increased.

And be prepared to participate in 2019 at one of these just announced venues:

SHARE Winter 2019:     Phoenix, AZ   March 10-15
SHARE Summer 2019:  Pittsburgh, PA  August 4-9

You can always see the future SHARE schedule here.

IBM Master the Mainframe Contest Winner is U.S. Woman

Contributed By Ed Webb

"You might think of the mainframe computer as long-gone relic of the Cold War. But banks, especially, still rely on modern versions of the old classic: They're huge and old-fashioned, sure, but they're also proven to be mega-reliable. Fast forward to today, and meet Anna McKee, a 22-year-old college senior at the University of North Texas, who was named the winner of the IBM Master of the Mainframe programming contest last week [mid-March 2018] — making her the first woman from North America to take the title.

....

Her prizes: A $2,750 travel stipend to go to the closest IBM head office to meet with executives and recruiters; an HTC Vive virtual reality headset; a "Master of the Mainframe" hoodie."

See this Enterprise Systems Magazine article to read more about her efforts to win this contest.

Well-known SHARE Speaker Marna Walle Interviewed for IBM Systems Magazine

Contributed By Ed Webb

"Reg Harbeck: Hi. This is Reg Harbeck and I'm here today with Marna Walle of IBM who is coming to me from the mothership Poughkeepsie. Marna has been with IBM on the mainframe for a while. She came right out of university and she is really involved with all kinds of things mainframe including she has even been involved in the development of a[n IBM] Redbook. She helps people position for new releases of z/OS and she also really involved with SHARE. Well, before I tell you all about her, let me introduce her to you. Marna, if you can tell us about how you got onto the mainframe, into IBM and into SHARE.

Marna Walle: Thanks, Reg. You know it has been an interesting path and I've loved every step of it so right after college, I joined IBM. I picked Poughkeepsie like you called it the mothership and I've loved it here ever since. I don't ever want to leave and I got hired into a department I really liked. I was learning something called MVS that I didn't know a whole lot about even though I had actually taken one or two mainframe classes in college, which I liked so I knew a little bit, but not as much as I should. So I got here and I have just been loving it and everyday trying to learn a whole lot more. That includes of course then eventually getting to go to SHARE and meeting a wonderful mainframe community and just needing to do a whole lot more because there is so much to learn."

Learn more about Marna from this article from IBM systems Magazine.

Humor

Computer History Videos

Contributed by Chris Blackshire

Some interesting and amusing mainframe related videos that I have stumbled upon.

Top 10 Fastest Computers in the World 2016 - How much faster is a supercomputer than a PC or iPad Pro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBpkSIJ9KwU

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

7 p.m.

Location: LabCorp in RTP

Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto 1912 T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room. Use 1912 TW Alexander Drive, Durham, NC 27703 in your map app.

Free Food before meeting: BarBQ, Sodas and Tea, Dessert

Program:

SHARE Sacramento Conference Highlights

Speaker: Ed Webb at SAS

SPARTA News

P.O. Box 13194

Research Triangle Park, NC  27709-3194

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