Use Case - RACF Protection
Which profile protects a dataset in RACF?
Situation:
Some data is critical to an enterprise's survival, therefore it's vital to know exactly who
has access to it, and what kind of access they have. In this example, the auditor has been asked to
verify that only authorized users have access to certain data in RACF.
Complications:
In RACF, datasets can be protected by class DATASET profiles. This is often done by defining
generic profiles that protect groups of datasets on the basis of naming conventions. In time, this
practice may result in the creation of a large number profiles whose generic masks fit the DSN
concerned. RACF uses the best matching profile when checking a user's access rights. This means
that the auditor first has to find the best matching profile, and then find out which rights were
granted for the user IDs concerned. Using RACF alone, this task may be very time-consuming.
Solution:
Beta 88 zSecurity Administrator's solution is quick, simple and completely accurate. The
auditor simply needs to key in the dataset name and the user's RACF ID. Beta 88 immediately shows
which generic profile has been used, and what kind of access rights the user with this ID has.










