Making changes to your hardware – like upgrading to the latest version of Power – doesn’t necessarily mean your IBM i is getting a fresh start. Your hardware may be new, but the underlying security settings and controls will remain the same.
For example, if your users were granted unlimited login attempts on the old hardware — like the 8% of organizations surveyed in the 2026 State of IBM i Security Study — the same will be true on your new hardware. And conversely, if you do implement the proper security controls on your hardware, they can be easily restored on any new hardware upgrades. So if you have recently upgraded your hardware, this is a great opportunity to establish IBM i security best practices for your organization now and into the future.
What is Fortra's Free Security Scan?
Fortra’s free Security Scan is meant to help you do just that. The Security Scan takes an inventory of your current security settings and uses the results to demonstrate your data’s degree of vulnerability and pinpoint specific weaknesses. The scan itself is safe, quick, non-intrusive, and performed by one of our experienced Security Advisers. After the scan is completed, one of our security experts will review the results with you and walk you through your sensitive data’s current degree of vulnerability, where vulnerabilities exist, how to fix them, and what areas of security you should prioritize. You will also discover the strength of your user security and password settings and whether your system is protected from malware threats.
How Can the Scan Improve Security on New Hardware?
Our security experts frequently find significant security vulnerabilities in the scan results – including invalid sign on attempt limits set to no maximum value, millions of invalid sign on attempts attributed to a single user, group profiles that grant administrative authorities to 90% of profiles, and much more. Fortunately, these misconfigurations are 100% preventable and we want to help you make sure they don’t exist on your hardware now and on any upgrades in the future.
