Re: AS400 Class *USER and special authority *SECADM

Charles,

On Mar 24, 2010, at 5:32 AM, Charles Wilt wrote:

You understanding is incorrect.

Example, department managers may be
able to modify their own people. Note that I don't believe this type
of usage is common now-a-days with SOX ect.

You're right, this is getting more common, but I think it is misguided. If I wanted a Dept Head to manage their own people I would do it with an adopted authority program (that logged extensively) rather than make multiple people *SECADM. In order to make the DEPTHEAD=*SECADM method work you would have to give the Dept Head *CHANGE or *ALL authority to all of those profiles which would provide them with the ability to masquerade as those users or to create new, rogue users.

Also note that even if I don't have *ALLOBJ special authority, if you give me *USE authority to any profile that has it(or *USE to any profile that has *USE to any other profile, etc. etc. ), I can assume that profile's identity and exercise *ALLOBJ. I just happen to think giving any user *USE (or more) authority to any other users profile exposes an unwarranted level of risk. IMHO, use adopted authority instead.


jte

Also note that a user with *SECADM cannot give another user special
authorities, such as *ALLOBJ, that the *SECADM user doesn't have
themselves.

--
John Earl
President and CEO
Patrick Townsend Security Solutions
"The Encryption Company"

Olympia, WA | www.patownsend.com