“WebSphere MQ has evolved to the point where it is mission critical infrastructure, with millions of messages a day being sent at many sites (companies). There’s a lot of risk associated with that.” So says Candle Corp. solutions architect Peter Rhys Jenkins during the expoQ webinar, “Enterprise-Level WebSphere MQ Security.”

Jenkins says vulnerabilities abound, and not just for MQ. “Every piece of Ethernet is potentially at risk, especially when you look at the proliferation of wireless devices, every processor is at risk, every application is at risk, and everywhere you make a transition from one tier to another is at risk. The whole thing’s at risk."

Protecting your messaging middleware architecture presents its own set of potential problems. They include the ease with which hackers can now get a look at and collect significant enterprise data, and wrongdoers who build and insert their own data into company Queues, or delete or change messages, or launch denial of service attacks, which are hardly just aimed at prominent Web sites anymore. Such attacks have an “equal impact on businesses. If you deny messages the ability to move around, now that they’re mission critical, it’s a significant risk, and it’s trivial (very easy) to do,” Jenkins explains.

He says potential MQ security weaknesses are wide-ranging and include LANs, the 1414 MQ default port, SYSTEM.DEF.xxx and other strings and, especially, WiFi wireless connections.

So businesses must take steps to minimize their exposure, he says, despite tight economic times. While the ROI is difficult to quantify, companies should “think of it as an insurance policy. It’s a business imperative. It needs to happen.”

How should you go about it? Numero Uno, says Jenkins, is to “distrust your network.” Assume it’s not secure, and take it from there.

During the webinar, Jenkins offers strategic and tactical recommendations for battening down MQ, looks at Wireless LAN security steps, Web Services precautions, and an overall security model. He also recommends application-level security and certificates (“If the message does not itself contain a certificate and is not encrypted, you can NEVER be sure of its integrity or origin”).

Watch a replay of the expoQ webinar to learn much more from Jenkins. He offers plenty of tips to trip up anyone who tries to exploit MQ to attack your business. Simply click here for the replay.

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