Problem

ExxonMobil is a global energy and petrochemical company providing a wide variety of products and services worldwide.  As a mature AS/400 technology user the company needed to integrate financial applications with their commercial banking provider, Bank of America.  The company wanted to transfer AS/400 files with sensitive data over their global network from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to a central EDI hub in Houston, Texas, and then forward data to Bank of America systems in Concord, California. But a way was needed to secure the information as it traversed several complex networks and computing platforms.  ExxonMobil already had experience using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to encrypt files using public/private key technology on many of its existing platforms. A PGP encryption solution would provide exactly the level of security and cross-platform support they needed for the file transfer solution.

 

Solution

Bank of America, already familiar with Townsend’s Alliance FTP Manager and PGP products, recommended that ExxonMobil consider the Townsend PGP encryption solution for the AS/400.  Vincent Tan Chye Khoon and Souri-Rajan Ananthanathan contacted Townsend and formed a team to manage the project. Virhuido Rios and Paul Pasala in the Houston EDI group contributed knowledge of the mainframe network. Working with Prema Sathasivam, the lead developer in Kuala Lumpur,  ExxonMobil began a rigorous evaluation of the Townsend Alliance FTP Manager product. 

The Alliance PGP Option provides a rich set of Application Program Interfaces to manage PGP keys, encrypt, decrypt, and sign files. For security reasons it was important to ExxonMobil that the files be encrypted on the AS/400 before transfer to remote sites.  The APIs were very important to the process. AS/400 production jobs that created AS/400 database files had to be modified to securely encrypt the files and then transfer them to the EDI hub in Houston using FTP. 

The Townsend customer support team began working with the development team in the early phases to select the right APIs and provide sample code.  In addition to providing support to the developers, Townsend worked with the Houston EDI team on mainframe compatibility issues.  Files secured on the AS/400 had to be properly transferred to the S/390 mainframe.  The final destination for the files was a Tandem system at Bank of America in Concord, California.  Townsend worked with the systems staff at Bank of America to insure that secured files could be properly processed on the Tandem system.

Within 45 days of the start of the project the ExxonMobil team had completed the evaluation of the Alliance PGP Option and made the decision to go into production.  Townsend provided support through the production cutover.  The project was implemented in record time. Souri-Rajan said “This was the best experience we had with an AS/400 software vendor. Townsend’s team provided needed technical assistance, training, and support. The project was a complete success!”