LAS VEGAS, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanguard Integrity Professionals, the leading provider of IBM mainframe security training, today announced they will offer up to 50 3-day training scholarships for unemployed cybersecurity professionals.

The Vanguard Scholarship program is part of Vanguard's commitment to ease our nation's unemployment crisis while focusing on the country's critical computing infrastructure. The Scholarship program will cover the cost of the 3-day Vanguard Security Conference (April 19-22 in Las Vegas) as well as roundtrip airfare, conference meals, and hotel accommodations.

"We understand that corporate financial constraints are forcing cuts in IT security -- this is a historical trend in hard times," said Ronn Bailey, founder and CEO of Vanguard Integrity Professionals. "But past experience has shown us that in times of economic recession, the need for better security dramatically increases. And now, when the need for mainframe security skills has never been greater, the number of trained resources is quickly shrinking. Our Scholarship Program is our commitment to reversing that scenario."

IT security is extremely volatile and changes constantly.  Because of this, skills can quickly become outdated making the person less employable. The Vanguard training event will address mainframe-specific technical security skills that attendees can put to use immediately. Security professionals (without mainframe experience) and mainframe professionals (without security experience) will be cross-trained with the most up-to-date procedures, improving their qualifications, and making them strong candidates for re-employment. Scholarship recipients will also gain insights into the latest government regulations and industry developments that impact day-to-day business practices.

"Our program reaches out to both employers and employment companies to grab these people and put them to work," continued Bailey. "Less people unemployed. Companies running better. Our citizens and country better protected at the same time. This shows what one small company can do to address a big problem. I invite the community to embrace this program and participate with us."

Recent statistics estimate that 85 percent of the nation's critical information infrastructure is controlled by private enterprise. According to Gartner Research Note G00172909, published on January 20, 2010, the "mainframe continues to be an important platform for many enterprises, hosting about 90 percent of their mission critical applications." Gartner validates, "…the incidence of high-risk vulnerabilities is astonishingly high."

The Vanguard Scholarship Program is especially important given Gartner's recommendation that enterprises who rely on mainframes must "Invest in mainframe-specific technical security skills... A real shortage of mature mainframe security skills makes configuration and administration errors more likely [on the mainframe] than on other enterprise server operating systems (OSs) in the same enterprise..."

Vanguard Security Training, a 2010 "SC Magazine" finalist for best professional training program, delivers exactly the kind of training that Gartner recommends, in a concentrated period of time, in a very cost-effective way. The event consists of three full days of speakers and panels focused on examining effective strategies for integrating information security technology. Vanguard has hosted this premier annual mainframe technical security training conference for the last 24 years, providing IT security specialists with both basic and advanced security training from world-class educators drawn from the entire mainframe security community, as well as providing networking opportunities for all participants.

Vanguard will track the attendee's attendance and issue a 'Certificate of Completion.' CISSP®, CISM®, and CISA® certified attendees will also be able to earn Continuing Professional Education credits. Vanguard is also developing partner relationships with employment companies to assist in job placements, as well as notifying employers of the available pool of qualified security professionals.

Gartner's research note is available on the Vanguard web site (www.go2vanguard.com) or directly from Gartner, Inc.

The Scholarship Program

The scholarships include the cost of the 3-day event, conference meals, airfare, and hotel accommodations. To qualify as a candidate, the individual must have previously worked in the security field at a company that uses IBM mainframes; and provide the names and contact information for their past supervisor or manager. Candidates will be verified and qualified entrants will be chosen at the discretion of Vanguard Integrity Professionals. Scholarship entrants must fill out an entry form on the conference web site. More details are provided on the web site at http://www.go2vanguard.com/vsec2010scholarship.php.

About Vanguard Integrity Professionals

Vanguard Integrity Professionals provides enterprise security software and services that solve complex security and regulatory compliance challenges for government agencies and corporations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.go2vanguard.com.

Vanguard Security 2010 is a trademark of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, Inc. Any other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE Vanguard Integrity Professionals

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Alchemy Solutions Inc. is shipping NeoData zLink, a new offering which makes it less risky and more efficient to migrate mainframe applications and data to Microsoft .NET.  Most notably, NeoData zLink provides capabilities to easily and accurately move partial or complete VSAM data sets to Windows or .NET, and maintain connections to related data and application logic that remains on the mainframe.  

NeoData zLink lets users target specific applications, or subsets of applications, for re-hosting without code changes, and without having to move all their associated VSAM or DB2 data, the company said. Organizations can then continue their migration by moving the data to native SQL Server using NeoData for SQL Server, according to Alchemy.

“Cost pressures are one of the major drivers for today’s mainframe modernization or migration projects,” Ron Langer, Alchemy Solutions general manager told IDN.  “But in today’s economy, few CIOs are interested in taking a year or more to move their entire application.  They really want to move some applications, but don’t want to break all their interconnections. “

Compuware Corporation announced the results of a benchmark study, commissioned by Compuware and conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The study found six primary areas of vulnerability to privacy and data security for the financial services industry: risk of data breach, diminishment of customer loyalty and trust, malicious or negligent insiders, risk of outsourcing confidential data to third parties, regulatory non-compliance, and ineffective privacy and information governance.

The study, Privacy & Data Protection Practices: a Benchmark Study of the Financial Services Industry, was compiled from interviews with chief information security officers, chief security officers, chief privacy officers or executives with equivalent responsibilities from 80 multinational financial services organizations. The findings revealed areas of vulnerability or non-compliance such as 83 percent of financial service companies surveyed using real data in the development and testing of applications. A majority of these organizations do not take appropriates steps to protect this confidential and sensitive information.

Compuware Data Privacy solutions provide security in both the test and production environments. Compuware offers a complete data privacy solution to help companies protect their critically sensitive information by making it possible to encrypt, scramble, translate, generate, age, analyze and validate test data. The solution also allows efficient recording of authorized internal activity between users and the application, protecting data against internal attacks.

(I-Newswire) March 1, 2010 - >Scort's tools for application modernisation in mainframe environments grow Metrixware's range of application portfolio management and IT governance solutions


Metrixware, producer of software solutions dedicated to Application Portfolio Management (APM) and IT Governance, announces the acquisition of Scort, a company specialising in mainframe application modernisation towards J2EE and .Net architectures. This operation underlines Metrixware's intention to position itself as a major player in the Information Systems modernisation market, with an exhaustive offer that covers all aspects of the IS management and valorisation process. Based on the same strategy, this merger is the foundation stone of a solid and durable group with nearly one hundred people and an expected 2010 turnover of over € 8 M.


From assessment of the present towards modernisation

Historically, Metrixware has been present in the Application Portfolio Management and IT Governance market since 1995, when it decided to provide IT management with the information they require to analyse and steer their application portfolio.

Rockville, MD – March 1, 2010 — Micro Focus® (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today unveiled findings from an informal survey it conducted with various government IT practitioners over the past three months. The survey asked these experts about their plans to modernize their critical mainframe applications, and if and when they planned to allocate budget to the task.

Among the survey’s findings, more than 72 percent of those surveyed said that they are planning to build application modernization into their budgets within the next six months to two years (40 percent planned to budget for modernization within six months to one year). Interestingly, despite the recent buzz around cloud computing, only 6 percent of those surveyed stated that they planned to adopt cloud computing as part of their modernization efforts. The top modernization objective cited by respondents was to move to web-enabled systems (54 percent), with Windows cited as their systems’ most likely platform (38 percent) after modernization.

In addition, long-term cost savings was noted as the most important benefit of modernization, with ease-of-use a close second. A respondent from GSA noted that business requirements are one of their organization’s most important motivators for application modernization, and that they are planning to budget for this effort within six months. GSA’s end objective is to take advantage of various open source tools.

“With IT spending basically flat under the proposed federal FY 2011 budget, agencies are feeling growing pressure to spend wisely and maximize return on their investments,” said Ken Powell, president of Micro Focus North America. “In the pursuit of Web 2.0 technologies, application modernization allows agencies to upgrade their legacy systems without replacing or rewriting core mission-critical applications, which can be expensive, risky, and time-consuming. Today, Micro Focus works closely with more than 6,000 customers throughout the public sector, helping them tackle modernization projects. These customers are finding that modernization can provide a practical, cost-effective step toward next-generation technologies like web-enabled systems and SOA, or cloud-enabling their IT assets as they move toward cloud computing.”