Re: Security level

From Al Macintyre BPCS 405 CD on OS/4 V4R3

If you get it to work, I will be very interested in hearing from your 
experiences.

1. Check your IBM manuals on security & the advice from IBM Security Advisor.

http://www.as400.ibm.com/tstudio/secure1/index_av.htm

You can seton IBM Security Auditing with System Value QAUDLVL which is a list 
of  values such that one of them is *PGMFAIL & what this will do for someone 
operating at Security Level 30 is every time someone runs something that 
would fail if it was Level 40, it lets it run but it logs the incident, so 
you can see all the stuff that is running on your system that works at 30 but 
won't at 40.  Assuming you have sufficient disk space for this, I would let 
this run for both a whole normal month, including fiscal month end, but also 
for odd months like physical inventory & fiscal year end.

2. When we installed our OS/400 in 1998, in preparation for converting to 
BPCS 405 CD, we started at Security Level 40 on the advice of IBM and our 
hardware business partner.  I said but but but I saw in the BPCS 405 install 
instructions that we have to be at Security Level 30 for BPCS to work right, 
but it was like everyone was saying "Al, a modern business today NEEDS to be 
at Security Level 40 ... you need to try this & only go back to 30 if it does 
not work right."  Well we had an endless string of security problems trying 
to get BPCS 405 CD to work in our Pilot Testing, and in our files conversion. 
 We were a very heavy user of SSA Help Support.

This led to calls to top management of Central Industries, by high level 
managers at SSA, claiming that I was not competent for this job, the evidence 
being that anyone who would try to install BPCS 405 CD at Security Level 40 
obviously had no clue as to what they were doing.  It was like unanimous, 
multiple leadership at SSA saying that BPCS 405 CAN NOT be installed at 
Security Level 40, and that anyone who understands OS/400 & who READS the SSA 
implementation instructions either comprehends this or is unqualified for the 
job.

The SSA callers went on to offer Central the notion that SSA Professional 
Services take over the job of implementing BPCS 405 CD for us, and if we 
really truely wanted to run BPCS 405 CD at Security Level 40, SSA 
Professional Services would be happy to spend our money converting BPCS 405 
CD so that it would work there, but also warning us that would make BPCS so 
heavily modified that SSA Help Support would not be able to help us in the 
future.

I mentioned some of this later in some BPCS-L thread on Security issues & 
various people who NOW are on the SSA staff & other companies whose opinions 
I respect, basically said that all of the above must be my not remembering 
the scenarios correctly, because BPCS 405 CD can run at Security Level 40 
without a big to do conversion wise ... there's just a few programs that need 
to be tweaked.  Think it terms of a budget of a few thousand dollars for some 
BPCS consultants to do that for us.  No big deal.

I now suspect that the problem was more with the CONVERSION process, and 
IMPLEMENTING modules, not with RUNNING BPCS, and that perhaps SSA staff was 
letting the desire to market SSA Professional Services get in the way of 
explaining what the problem really was.

3. Perhaps you should contact your BPCS Tech Support place ... whether it is 
SSA or one of their competitors & ask this same question ... feel free to 
quote from this post, since obviously different people have totally different 
perspectives on this topic.

It is my understanding that BPCS V6 does run at Security Level 40, so 
presumably there is some SSA document some place that identifies what all had 
to be changed to make BPCS work at Security Level 40.

>  From:    jbrown@behlen.ca (Jane Brown)
>  
>  We are on BPCS version 4.05CD on an AS/400 Version 4.4.
>  
>  We are thinking of changing to security level 40.  Are there any issues 
with
>  BPCS in this regard?  What should a user have for special authority to be
>  able to function properly?
>  
>  Any comments in this regard would be appreciated.
>  
>  Jane Brown
>  Behlen Industries

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
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