Dallas, Texas, is the perfect place to bring SHARE members together to talk about what's new in mainframe and enterprise IT. It's where the integrated circuit computer chip (which became the microchip) was invented more than six decades ago. Before you pack your bags for SHARE Dallas 2022, March 27–30, and head to the home of Texas Instruments, read on for a selection of 10 must-catch sessions from the technical agenda, covering everything from crypto and ransomware to combatting talent drains and using Ansible and Zowe on IBM Z.

1. z/OS Crypto Lockdown

In this session, Ross Cooper, z/OS security specialist at IBM, and Eysha Shirrine Powers, senior technical staff member at IBM, will explore best practices for securing crypto environments. They will help identify the system authorization facility (SAF) profiles used to protect classes to protect Integrated Cryptographic Service Facility (ICSF), CSFSERV, CSF keys, CRYPTOZ, and dataset. How to use the TKE workstation to configure access control points for crypto express hardware security modules and looking at the tradeoffs of various security configuration settings. Both Cooper and Powers will also host the session, “What's New in Z Crypto: Enterprise Key Management Edition,” which is set to cover the security of cryptographic keys and offer a few tools and tricks to make key management easier.

2. Ransomware – Best Practices for Vulnerability Management

Ronald Colmone, distinguished engineer at Broadcom, and Kevin Schachtschneider, software engineer at Broadcom, will tackle a major disruptor of enterprise operations in this session: ransomware. Attendees will be taken through a fictional ransomware attack on z/OS in order to learn best practices in vulnerability management to prevent the next breach.

3. Zero Trust Architecture Concepts Applied to IBM Z

For this session, David Rossi, cyber security architect at IBM, and Anton Niemand, cyber security specialist at IBM, plan to discuss the concept of Zero Trust — what it means and what impact it has on IBM Z security discussions. The session will focus on NIST 800-207 and Forester ZTX interpretation, as well as other things to think about when including IBM Z in a Zero Trust Architecture.

4. Working With Git and the Mainframe – A Complete Roundtrip for Developers

If your enterprise wants to shift sources to Git, Armin Kramer, software engineer at DATEV eG, will show attendees of this session how to replace a self-written source control system with Git and get all of your mainframe developers working with Git. He'll also outline his business's pain points and some solutions that have helped ease the shift to Git. Finally, Kramer will demonstrate how his company works with Git and the mainframe.

5. Combat the Talent Drain With Effective Strategies to Retain Women in Mainframe Amid the "Great Resignation"

According to Rocket Software's Senior Director of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Sharra Owens-Schwartz, gender diversity can improve bottom-line results. But, since the beginning of the pandemic, gender equity gains have begun to erode. The "Great Resignation" will force enterprises to adopt strategies to bolster inclusion and diversity. Join this session to learn best practices as well as key success factors and metrics around how you can get started improving retention of women in the enterprise IT workforce.

6. Unconscious Bias Affects Technologies as Well as People

Misty Decker, mainframe modernization product marketing director at Micro Focus, will use this session to explore how research on unconscious bias in diversity and inclusion can be applied to biases against mainframe technologies. Some of the unconscious biases against technology include: "There's nothing new in mainframe" and "COBOL is a dead-end career path." Decker will demonstrate how mainframe experts can counter the negative effects of these biases.

7. How Does Parallel Sysplex Reduce Risk in Hybrid Cloud Environments?

In this session, Mark Rader, senior certified IT specialist at IBM, will explore different models of the Parallel Sysplex and data sharing deploy in an immediate, or transactional, consistency model. From a risk perspective, he will also share some of the models' key differences.

8. Deploying and Securing Zowe from z/OS to zCX to Hybrid Cloud and Everything in Between

Joseph Robert Winchester, z Systems senior technical staff member at IBM, will offer a demo for attendees to learn about Zowe containerization strategy, architecture, and security, as well as Zowe conformance criteria with respect to containers. The session will also include traditional Zowe deployment and configuration on z/OS using keyrings, multi-factor-authentication, different security managers, USS setup, z/OSMF configuration, and all of the scenarios in which Zowe is deployed.

9. What's New In z/OS V2.5: The Big D Edition and What's New in z/OSMF V2.5?

Your tour guide for this session, Gary S. Puchkoff, senior technical staff member for z/OS architecture and development at IBM, will walk through the latest features introduced in the z/OS V2.5 release or delivered as new continuous delivery items. Puchkoff will then cover any major new and changed functions of the release, particularly those that have become available since the last SHARE event.

10. Installing z/OS V2.5 Using z/OSMF Software Management

Kurt Quackenbush, senior software engineer at IBM, will walk attendees of this session through how to install z/OS (as well as the CICS Transaction Server, Db2, IMS, and associated programs) using z/OSMF software management. Attendees will also learn about software instances, portable software instances, how to acquire a z/OS ServerPac portable software instance from IBM, how z/OSMF workflows will be exploited, and more.

Register for SHARE Dallas. If you have a favorite session from SHARE Dallas or would like to contribute or be quoted in a future story, email the SHARE’d Intelligence team at editor@SHARE.org or submit an idea here.