IBM has launched a new mainframe system capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day, in a bid to wade further into the financial cybersecurity market.

The mainframe, called IBM Z, seeks to address cyberattacks which have compromised financial data. It also aims to help firms automate financial regulatory compliance, in line with confidentiality and data protection laws.

"The vast majority of stolen or leaked data today is in the open and easy to use because encryption has been very difficult and expensive to do at scale," Ross Mauri, general manager at IBM Z, said in a statement on Monday. "We created a data protection engine for the cloud era to have a significant and immediate impact on global data security."

IBM claimed that its new mainframe can encrypt data at a rate 18 times faster than other platforms. IBM Z is the latest in a series of 'z' mainframe systems developed by the corporation.

The mainframe will be used initially as an encryption engine for IBM's cloud computing technology and blockchain (distributed ledger technology) services.