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IBM believes that the request described has been solved and is available with a set of 7.3 PTFs. See https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6151287 for the list of PTFs and other related information.
IBM agrees with the request and a 7.3 solution appears to be desirable and feasible. IBM intends to provide a 7.3 solution. However, IBM's plans may change and no commitment is made that a solution will be provided.
IBM will use this request as input to planning but no commitment is made or implied. This request will be updated in the future if IBM implements it.
Adding System TLS 1.3 support to the IBM i 7.3 release is a high priority candidate for 2020.
Adding System TLS 1.3 support to the IBM i 7.2 release is not under consideration.
The COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC) has reviewed this requirement and recommends that IBM view this as a high priority requirement that is important to address.
TLS 1.3 is now considered industry standard and should be available in all in supported IBM i releases.
Background: The CEAC members have a broad range of experience in working with small and medium-sized IBM i customers. CEAC has a crucial role in working with IBM i development to help assess the value and impact of individual RFEs on the broader IBM i community and has therefore reviewed your RFE.
To find out how CEAC help to shape the future of IBM i, see CEAC @ ibm.biz/BdYSYj and the article "The Five Hottest IBM i RFEs Of The Quarter" at ibm.biz/BdYSZT
Therese Eaton – CEAC Program Manager, IBM
The CAAC has reviewed this requirement and recommends that IBM view this as a high priority requirement that is important to be addressed for IBM i 7.3 to allow this new security standard on a currently marketed and supported system. However, IBM i 7.2 is an older release -- although still marketed and supported, customers should be moving to the newer releases and therefore not needing new support on IBM i 7.2 release.
Background: The COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC) members have a broad range of experience in working with small and medium-sized IBM i customers. CAAC has a key role in working with IBM i development to help assess the value and impact of individual RFEs on the broader IBM i community, and has therefore reviewed your RFE.
For more information about CAAC, see www.common.org/caac
For more details about CAAC's role with RFEs, see http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/Blogs/i-Can/May-2017/COMMON-Americas-Advisory-Council-%28CAAC%29-and-RFEs/
Nancy Uthke-Schmucki - CAAC Program Manager
Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - Power Systems
Product - IBM i
Component - Networking
Operating system - IBM i
Source - None
For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - Power Systems
Product - IBM i
Component - Core OS
Operating system - IBM i
Source - None
Fully accepting that we always need to push people to the newest release, this being the security exposure, I strongly recommend a patch for 7.2 also. Three reasons:
1. Help Systems Marketplace Survey 2019 shows that a good number, 22%, of installations are still on 7.2 and will definitely take an year or two to be current.
2. Our community is mainly small and medium businesses and some like government institutions or hospitals are continuously highly budget challenged.
3. And this third one is the dearest to me – reputation management – just imagine that one of them has severe attacks, is a charity institution, and the news hits headlines “they had an old AS/400 …”. We have lived this with the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme “AN ANCIENT IBM AS/400 was crucial to US investment swindler Bernard Madoff's cunning Ponzi scam …” https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1529209/an-as-400-critical-madoff-ponzi-scheme
Simple conclusion – a patch for 7.2 for TLS 1.3 is fully justified.
Just my opinion but....
I agree that adding TLS1.3 to IBM i 7.3 would be an excellent use of IBM's resources. But IBM i 7.2 is now of an age where I do not believe it would be sensible to add this unless it was relatively trivial.
I can understand why a 7.2 customer might have reservations about moving to 7.4 so soon after GA but if TLS 1.3 was added to 7.3 then the 7.2 to 7.3 upgrade to gain this function would seem very compelling to me.
Cheers Steve B