IBM introduces fully encrypted z14 mainframe

IBM has announced a new mainframe in the Z series. According to the company, the z14 must provide all types of data with encryption. IBM wants to respond to the large amount of data breaches in recent years.

IBM claims that the mainframe can encrypt network data, external devices and applications. To do this, the company uses an ‘encryption engine that can continuously provide full encryption for all data from databases, applications and cloud services’. The mainframe must also be able to create and delete encryption keys. Furthermore, by using special hardware, the system is able to revoke a certain key if there are indications that unauthorized access is taking place.

IBM is also introducing encrypted APIs to control the z14. The mainframe runs at 5.2GHz, has up to 32TB of memory, and supports two million Docker containers and a thousand NoSQL databases. IBM says it wants to use the mainframe to respond to the growing number of data breaches, where often only part of the data appears to be encrypted. With the new mainframe, it would no longer be necessary to choose which data is and which is not encrypted.

The technical specifications show that the z14 is equipped with a cryptographic coprocessor, also called Cpacf. This includes hardware acceleration for encryption and hashing, for example with aes, des and sha.