Why CSF | MainTegrity Cyber Security Framework (CSF)

Why choose CSF suite?

Mainframe environments store the world's most critical data—financial transactions, healthcare records, government systems.

Traditional security tools like RACF, ACF2, and Top Secret build strong walls, but attackers have become smarter at stealing credentials, exploiting trusted network connections, and moving laterally from compromised devices into the mainframe.

The attack vector has changed. Direct mainframe attacks are rare. Attacks through compromised trusted network nodes are increasingly common. CSF provides the protection modern threats demand.

No amount of backup will help you recover.

No amount of Backup will un-steal your data, it's gone forever!

You can restore encrypted files but can never get your data once it's gone, even after you pay the ransom.

A typical mainframe site has 2–4 security staff, often part-time. The gap between attack capability and defensive capacity has never been wider.

Data theft is invisible

There are no z/OS tools to detect or stop a theft in progress. Data exfiltration looks like normal workload from a trusted source—but there are telltale signs if you have NetWatch.

There's a Gap In Existing Security Tools

RACF, ACF2, and Top Secret control access. They were never designed to detect what someone does after they get in with legitimate credentials. That gap is exactly where modern attacks succeed.

The Attack Vectors Have Changed

Direct attacks against z/OS are rare. What's common now are compromised Windows servers, hijacked VPNs, and stolen credentials flowing through trusted connections your perimeter was designed to allow.

More on How The Attack Vectors Have Changed

Penetration Tester Tested

Independent penetration testers well known in the z/OS community have tested CSF across multiple engagements. Several installed it on their own production systems. None have breached a CSF-protected environment.

For organizations subject to DORA penetration testing requirements, this provides direct compliance evidence.

The Cost of Inaction

The largest data breaches in history involved mainframe data. Common thread: slow detection, unclear scope, prolonged recovery.

Anthem (2015): 78.8M patient records, undetected for 3 months, $500M+ in settlementsent records, undetected for 3 months, $500M+ in settlements
Equifax (2017): 147M consumer records, weeks to determine scope, $1.4B total cost
UnitedHealth (2024): 1/3 of Americans affected, 9-day outage, $3B write-down

These organizations had perimeter security, access controls, and backup strategies.

What they didn't have was the ability to detect credential-based attacks in progress, contain them in seconds, and recover surgically. That's the gap CSF was built to close.

More About The Cost of Breaches

What makes CSF different?

CSF monitors what credentialed users and processes are actually doing — in real time, through security exits and SMF exits, watching system activity as it happens rather than analyzing logs after the fact. Malicious encryption detected and suspended in under one second. Data exfiltration halted at threshold. Privilege escalation blocked before elevated access is granted. The attacker is frozen.

Your business keeps running.

That instant containment delivers something no traditional tool can: the gift of time.

Damage stops accumulating the moment a threat is detected. Your team investigates with clarity, not panic. Whether the attack lands at 3 PM or 3 AM, the response is identical — because it happens at machine speed, not human speed.

Machine Speed Response

Cyberattacks unfold in seconds. Human response times — minutes or hours — are simply too slow.

This machine-speed response dramatically reduces the window in which attackers can cause damage.

Intelligence Without Noise

Traditional monitoring tools generate overwhelming volumes of alerts. CSF learns normal workload behavior and separates meaningful anomalies from normal changes or real anomolies, dramatically reducing false positives.

Surgical Precision Recovery

Instead of restoring entire systems, CSF identifies exactly what was compromised and restores only affected components. It can then verify that the trusted state has been restored. This adds precision, reduces downtime and accelerates recovery.

Compliance Built Into the Architecture

DORA requires two-hour recovery and independent penetration testing. NIST CSF expects continuous monitoring across the full security lifecycle. PCI DSS mandates file integrity monitoring and auditable logging. HIPAA, SOX, FISMA, ISO 27001, and GDPR each add their own requirements.

CSF maps directly to these frameworks because it was designed around the same principles they enforce. Real-time detection, automated response, guided recovery, and forensic audit trails aren't features bolted on for compliance — they are the architecture.

Audit preparation becomes evidence collection, not a scramble.

Enterprise Integration

CSF extends your existing security infrastructure with real-time bi-directional connections that enable alerts to flow to your SOC while CSF handles automated response on the mainframe.

Integration spans change control systems including ServiceNow and BMC Helix, SIEM platforms including Splunk, IBM QRadar, Sumo Logic, ArcSight, and BMC Command Center, security tools including IBM TZ and Guardium, and recovery tools including Rocket Data Recovery and IBM SafeGuarded Copy.

CSF's API architecture supports bi-directional communication via REST APIs, enabling a query-response-action relationship that creates a dynamic information-sharing environment across z/OS, Linux, Unix, Windows, and cloud platforms.

Actions can take place with or without human interaction, allowing automated workflows across your entire security ecosystem.

CSF maps to the five NIST Cybersecurity Framework functions end to end.

Identify

Security visibility, SIEM/SOC integration, embedded recovery planning, compliance reporting.

Protect

24/7 endpoint monitoring, file integrity monitoring, whitelisting, AI tool integration.

Detect

Data exfiltration detection, encryption detection in seconds, escalation detection, near-zero false positives.

Respond

Immediate damage control, real-time alerts, precise forensics, GUI-based investigation.

Recover

Ransomware removal, automated recovery guidance, immutable backup support, trusted-state verification.