SSL channels for WebSphere MQ provide an excellent way to protect messages as they move from one queue manager to another. However, how can you protect messages when they are at rest on a queue? Also, how can you tell if the message has been altered since it reached the queue and how do you know who really sent the message?

WebSphere MQ Extended Security Edition can be used to solve these problems and more. It employs a certificate based security infrastructure which provides authentication, authorisation and auditing for a WMQ network. This means messages can be digitally signed and/or encrypted for their entire lifetime inside WMQ. WMQ ESE also provides authentication of users and their authorisation to queues and messages. WMQ ESE is administered centrally for easy to manage end to end security.

For more information on WMQ ESE, checkout the product page here.

If there is a good amount of interest in this topic then I’ll follow up with some more articles on how to implement and make best use of WMQ ESE