Grid security: Next steps

Abstract

One of the more mature instances of a serviceoriented architecture is the model known as Grid Computing. Computational Grids and Data Grids are becoming commonplace in certain sectors, yet the style of security they implement is suitable only for a fairly small subset of possible user communities. Using some case studies and experience, we describe the existing Grid security models, explain why they represent shortcomings for some applications, and describe some emerging architectures, Trusted Computing and virtualisation, which help address the problems.

Blind processing: Securing data against system administrators

“…Several systems have been built using trusted computing concepts such as the Next Generation Secure Computing Base by Microsoft [59], Trusted Execution Technology by Intel [3], secure co-processors by IBM [25], [1], and others [40], [47], [49], [73]. In addition, researchers have developed systems that utilize the TPM for anonymous attestation [69], authentication [21], [56], device attestation [30], [52], digital rights management [45], digital signature [9], [71], distributed computing [35], [67], drive encryption [26], e-voting [75], grid security [48], [50], [51], identity management [43], [54], mobile agents [58], [62], on-line payment [12], on-line storage [76], peer-to-peer networks [11], [38], policy enforcement [5], [63], [66], and virtualization [13], [29]. These studies, however, do not consider a security service that will hide information from the rest of the system including the system administrator as in blind processing.…”

Trusted Computing: Security and Applications

“…The application of trusted computing to Grid Computing has been widely discussed (see, for example, [23,24,50,94]). Much of this work aims to prevent or detect resource provider misbehaviour.…”

Securing Grid Workflows with Trusted Computing

“…Application of TC to Grid Security: A number of authors have considered how Trusted computing could be applied to Grid Computing [4,5,15,24]; the main goal of much of this prior art is to prevent or detect resource provider misbehaviour. Mao et al [3] propose Daonity, a system which establishes a relocatable key enabling controlled group sharing of encrypted content.…”

“…The application of Trusted Computing (TC) technology is emerging as a potential solution to a number of Grid security problems [14,15] and this paper investigates how this technology may be applied to secure Grid workflows. Section 2 provides a brief summary of Grid workflows, and outlines a set of security requirements.…”

“…Many observers have commented on the vulnerabilities surrounding Grid middleware and the subsequent risk of job execution compromise [4,15]. Therefore, it is also necessary for the assurances determined during the selection process to hold true until job execution has finished.…”