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Status Under review
Workspace z/OS
Categories BCP_SMF
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 4, 2024

Signed SMF Records - Improvement of the Validation Process with IFASMFDL

Currently one has to follow the below steps to activate and validate signed SMF records (According: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=records-setting-up-using-digitally-signed-smf).
The basic steps to set up and use digitally signed SMF records are:
- Create the keys that will serve as the public/private key pair.
- Update the SMFPRMxx member of parmlib to specify that you want SMF to sign records.
- Use the IFASMFDL dump program to carry signature records to data sets.
- Use the IFASMFDP dump program to validate records.

However, processing the same data twice is a waste of resources (CPU and Time). It shall be possible to validate SMF signatures directly during the DUMP from the logstream with IFASMFDL.

Currently I dump the data anyway from the Logstream to datasets for archiving. But to validate the records, I would have to read all of the data gain, I do not write the data again on DASD and use DD DUMMY for the output but that should not be necessary at all. The validation should already take place when the data is dumped from the logstream to a dataset.

Idea priority High