ASPG, Inc. Announces Release of MegaCryption v7.0.0: Significant Updates to Award-Winning z/OS Cryptography Toolkit, Including Encryption Defaults and Greater Interoperability

ASPG, Inc. Announces Release of MegaCryption v7.0.0: Significant Updates to Award-Winning z/OS Cryptography Toolkit, Including Encryption Defaults and Greater Interoperability

Naples, FL -- Advanced Software Products Group (ASPG, Inc.) has announced v7.0.0 of MegaCryption for z/OS, a major update that prioritizes cryptographic governance and agility with updated algorithms and enhanced integration for hardware cryptography.

Designed for z/OS environments, MegaCryption is a comprehensive enterprise and mainframe cryptography toolkit providing organizations with broadly interoperable key management, data encryption, hashing, digital signatures, compression, and file management capabilities.

Organizations utilizing MegaCryption v7.0.0 can take advantage of modern cryptography without disrupting existing processes. A major component of this release is support for the updated OpenPGP standard (RFC9580). Conveniently, older standards (RFC4880 and RFC2440) are still fully supported, ensuring no interruptions for existing workflows.

Significantly, MegaCryption v7.0.0 now includes seven new asymmetric algorithms and seven elliptic curves, including X25519, Ed25519, X448, Ed448, and both NIST and Brainpool curves. It also adds OCB and GCM AEAD algorithms and AES-192 with hardware acceleration. Six new hashing algorithms have been added (SHA2 and SHA3 variants) along with enhanced string-to-key derivation methods, including Argon2, and Iterated and Salted. Password encryption for exported OpenPGP private keys has also been enabled, adding an essential layer of protection for sensitive key materials.

MegaCryption v7.0.0 boasts a smarter dynamic algorithm selection with Default Algorithms and Algorithm Preferences. This introduces a smarter, flexible means of managing global encryption defaults and preferences, allowing organizations to define, enforce and share consistent cryptographic standards across teams, systems, and environments, thereby reducing manual configuration and the risk of mismatched settings. A new feature called MGCOPTNS makes it easier to manage default encryption settings for individual sites. Preferred algorithm suites can be saved in exported public keys, while operators retain the option to adjust preferences at runtime.

Interoperability is a prime focus of MegaCryption v7.0.0. A new Recipient Preferred Algorithm feature allows MegaCryption to dynamically select the recipient's preferred algorithms, by obtaining cryptography parameters directly from their public key certificate, when encrypting or signing data. Their preferences are now saved when keys are imported into ICSF, RACF/ACF2/TSS, or data sets, which operators can still override when needed, providing users with improved interoperability with their cryptography partners.

Improved key management for ICSF-stored keys allows certificate metadata to be stored directly in a PKDS record's KDSR metadata area, simplifying key storage and improving efficiency. Keys stored in RACF/ACF2/TSS are now protected with AES-256. Additionally, the new PGPKVER option allows customization of the version of the OpenPGP public key format when generating asymmetric keys.

The entire suite of MegaCryption tools for Windows, Linux and z/OS is continually updated with new features and security enhancements. Interested parties can contact the ASPG sales team by phone at 800-662-6090 (toll-free) or 239-649-1548 (US/International) or email at aspgsales@aspg.com. The MegaCryption support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Learn more about the best MegaCryption tool for your environment at www.aspg.com/megacryption.

About Advanced Software Products Group

Advanced Software Products Group (ASPG, Inc.) is an industry-leading software development company with IBM, Microsoft, and GSA certifications. For nearly 40 years, they have been producing award-winning software for data centers and mainframes, specializing in data security, storage administration, and system productivity, providing solutions for a majority of the global 1000 data centers.