Known as Infosphere Guardium 8, the software supports expanded mainframe transaction monitoring and vulnerability assessment for DB2 on the mainframe itself, rather than on a peripheral servers.

Phil Neray, vice president of security product strategy with IBM Guardium, said that the technology was developed by IBM's mainframe team and, whilst Guardium supported the mainframe environment before, the new software is a major advance for IBM users.

In use, the software is billed as automatically monitoring data and application usage, and immediately alerts management to possible security breaches - either by rogue insiders or cybercriminals and hackers on the outside. Other key features of the software include fraud protection for SAP systems and the protection of SharePoint files.

One of the most interesting features of the software is the ability to carry out a series of automated tests to assess security vulnerabilities such as weak permissions that could leave the organisation open to data loss or failed compliance audits.

The driving force behind the new software, according to Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM's Information Management team, is that data has become the new currency for business.

As a result, he says that safeguarding that investment is a primary concern for businesses across every industry.

"IBM is the only vendor that can help clients reduce the complexity of data security across the largest and most diverse data centre environments while at the same time reducing the costs associated with regulatory compliance", he explained.