Managing XDUMP data set access

Fault Analyzer permits control of its XDUMP data sets with an XFACILIT security profile. If the access to the XDUMP XFACILIT security profile is not available or not defined, then no security violations are generated. This lack of violations is because Fault Analyzer checks the required user access first, and if not available does not attempt to create or read the associated XDUMP.

If the Fault Analyzer XFACILIT process described here is used as the method to control the XDUMP data sets, then the actual XDUMP data set cannot be read or deleted by a normal end user, except through analysis or deletion of the fault entry it is linked to. For example, where the payroll application has its own history file that general users do not have READ access to, this XFACILIT process means that any XDUMP data sets forpayroll are restricted from general users because they cannot access the fault entries.

Use UACC(NONE) as the general data set profile access level for XDUMP data sets, to prevent the possibility of security exposures. An exposure would exist if ALTER access was granted to all users on the XDUMP data set profile to permit creation, instead of UACC(NONE) and the following XFACILIT set-up. If, on a given system, all end users have similar access privileges, then the XDUMP data sets are still created if you choose to not set up the XFACILIT access, and instead give all users ALTER access to the XDUMP data set profile. This environment would probably have all users with equal access to the history files on that system. However, if some users do not have READ access to all history files, then using the XFACILIT profile with UACC(NONE) on the data set profile should be considered to extend the protection to any linked XDUMP data sets.