IBM established the IBM Champions program to recognize the expertise in and extraordinary support and advocacy for IBM technology, communities, and solutions. IBM Champions are peer-nominated members of the user community who evangelize for the platform, and are not IBM employees. The “POWER” Champion class was started 2011. Massiello has been named a Lifetime POWER Champion, the first person to receive this honor.

IBMI i Advocate and OS Upgrade Specialist Pete Massiello is a subject matter expert on IBM i system administration, virtualization and the IBM Power Systems hardware that IBM i runs on.

We all know that one of the major benefits of our beloved IBM i is that it runs and runs well. We don’t reboot the IBM i to correct application errors. Our users don’t get a blue screen of death. The hardware is designed to support businesses with high availability needs. This also makes it possible to keep hardware running for 10 years or more.

This new iTech Solutions Group service sets global customer security standards and increases the overall level of transparency on cybersecurity for IBM i customers.

The Spectre (Variant 1 & 2) and Meltdown (Variant 3) threats that target speculative execution on all CPU’s will affect IBM Power7, Power7+, Power8, and Power9 systems and IBM has stated that it will have firmware patches for Power Systems available but does not state if its patches will cover all three variants of the vulnerabilities. IBM has not issued fixes for Power6, Power6+, and Power7 systems.

Who among us hasn’t been concerned about the Equifax breach and the subsequent fraudulent verification site? Remember a couple of years ago when Target and Home Depot POS systems were hacked within weeks of each other and during the holidays? I spent so much time without my credit and debit cards I actually was forced to regress into using cash (gasp!) at physical stores to complete Christmas shopping. It was not a heartwarming holiday experience to say the least especially in the grip of a typical New York December.

Mother Nature has been letting us know that she is in charge lately. With Hurricane Harvey’s recent destruction in Texas, we are reminded of how important it is to be prepared for a disaster. Today, Hurricane Irma is threatening Florida and we felt that now is the time for companies to be sure that they are prepared in the event of a disaster. As a result, we have created a guide with 25 steps to help ensure that you are prepared before a disaster strikes.

We’ve recently written about how important it is to keep your IBM i current with OS releases and PTF’s in order to ensure that your system is secure, available and performing at its peak. Through years of working with customers and prospects, we have found three things that tend to effect whether or not companies keep their OS current; time, knowledge and money.

IBM i 7.1 is going to be headed for the IBM i support graveyard very soon.  IBM recently announced that IBM i 7.1 will be end of life on April 30, 2018, which means it’s time to move to 7.2 or 7.3.  We all know that you can stay on 7.1 and pay the service extension fees to IBM, but I’m not sure why you would throw your money away on that. IBM i 7.3 has been GA for over a year and it is a stable release. In fact, iTech…

If you believe your IBM i is 100% secure from attacks both inside and outside the firewall, then you are probably at risk. Many companies are under a false sense of security that their data is safe just because it resides on IBM i. A good IBM i administrator should be able to demonstrate that their systems are being proactively assessed and interrogated to minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities. Regardless of architecture, no system is 100% secure. However, when security is viewed as an operating strategy rather than a…