PGP encryption for XCOM
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PGP encryption for XCOM

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Article ID: 254925

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Updated On:

Products

XCOM Data Transport - Windows XCOM Data Transport - z/OS

Issue/Introduction

Is it possible to use PGP encryption for XCOM transfers between a mainframe running XCOM for z/OS 12.0 and a Windows server running XCOM for Windows 11.6?

Environment

  • XCOM™ Data Transport® for z/OS
  • XCOM™ Data Transport® for Windows

Resolution

XCOM supports data encryption between OS platforms via SSL/TLS but currently has no built-in support for PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).
Data Encryption Using SSL/TLS
Address Security Requirements

From reading more about PGP (Wikipedia - Pretty Good Privacy) and its differences with SSL/TLS (Information Security Stack Exchange - Public keys on OpenSSL vs PGP?), using PGP is popular with emails and its way to handle certificates is more suited for emails.
Therefore with those explanations, SSL/TLS looks like the right choice for file transfers, client/server and bi-directional.

If PGP is still required then manually coding XCOM pre/post processing exits on both sides of the transfer to do PGP encryption/decryption might be an option, but the effort required to do that is unknown.

To request PGP support to be added to the XCOM product in the future please create a new Idea on the Broadcom Community Ideas under category "XCOM Data Transport".