Computer security community has acknowledged the importance of human intelligence lies in a

kind of architectural construct which is called as Trusted computing base (TCB) in 1980s. A

great computer scientist , John Rushby, defined TCB as combination of trusted process and

kernel. This TCB comprises group of all hardware, software and other components that are

mandatory in creating and maintaining the security of the system. Basically this TCB consists of

an operating system, network hardware and software, well defined protocols and the exact

physical location of the system. So if there is chance in occurrence of any bugs or vulnerabilities

within the TCB will completely impact the security properties of the entire system. A piece of

hardware and software on which security depends and that we differentiate it from a much larger

quantity that can misbehave without any impact on security of the system.

Provisions were created during designing a TCB for system architecture. These provisions

include protection against malware, backing up data, user authentication support, awarding

authorization for few specific applications, etc. Main aim of the TCB is to maintain the

confidentiality and integrity of data on the system.

Here TCB is responsible for implementing security policy and monitoring all the required

activities of the system to make sure that it functions flawless and restricts all aspects to the

policy. So in order to attain this, the TCB needed to act like an abstract machine known as

reference monitor. The functioning of reference monitor occurs at the boundary between trusted

and untrusted domains of the system. Accessing the objects like files, processes etc by authorized

person, application etc is its main function . Because of the barriers present in between subjects

and objects there is a need To attain stability, the reference monitor maintains two properties for

it. They are

1 It can't be changed anymore and is secured from various kinds of modification

2 It has control over all access, impossible to bypass and should be treated for its own validity.

There are some attributes which are supplied by z/OS. So to include any software into the TCB,

then that software must have atleast one of these attributes. They are

1. Software must run in supervisor state

2. It must be authorized and need to execute through APF

3. execute with PSW key mask allowing keys 0 to 7.

Softwares outside the TCB are treated untrusted. Softwares which are part of the z/OS TCB

should confirm that application software is following the security policy. Software portions of

the TCB are needed to be protected from any tampers or effects. This is all because of the Von

neumon architecture applied virtually on all modern systems since machine code can be

processed by any program barring memory management provisions. In the present era of cpu,

protecting the memory which hosts the TCB is done by appending a piece of hardware known as

memory management unit which is operated by system os . Moreover os operate in supervisor

mode which means not letting such programming to other programs.

TCB is also responsible for input output operations, execution domain switching, memory

protection and process activation.