IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) Service Index (secure HTTPS)

When you use the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Service Console and IBM Tivoli Monitoring SOAP Server workspaces within the Tivoli OMEGAMON® Manager, you must supply a user ID and password. This information is sent to a Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server. The user ID and password (and the Service Console or SOAP commands and their results) are normally sent in "clear text" using TCP/IP and the HTTP protocol. HTTP is normally used by web browsers and servers. For the Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager, the Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager is acting as an HTTP client, like a web browser, while the monitoring server is the HTTP server.

If you want these values (especially the password) to be sent in encrypted form instead of clear text, you must use the secure version of these Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager workspaces. To be able to use the secure versions of these Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager workspaces, your Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager address space must be able to use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) communications protocol. HTTPS is the normal HTTP protocol, but uses SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security) to send information. The Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager address becomes enabled to use HTTPS by identifying the Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager address space to TCP/IP as a user of AT-TLS (Application Transparent-Transport Layer Security).

You identify your Tivoli OMEGAMON Manager address spaces as valid users of AT-TLS by creating or modifying an AT-TLS policy file and then refreshing a z/OS component that is known as the Policy Agent, which reads the updated policy file.

For more information about AT-TLS configuration, see IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON for z/OS: Planning and Configuration Guide.