Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations.
That sharing is not primarily file exchange but rather direct access to computers,
software, data and other resources [1].
GRID Computing is primarily a user beneficial notion, some of the benefits being
the following:
−
Organizations, as well as end users, are enabled to aggregate resources with an
entire IT infrastructure no matter where in the world they are located.
−
Organizations can dramatically improve the quality and speed of the products they
deliver, while reducing IT costs.
−
Companies are enabled to access and share remote databases and data repositories.
This is especially beneficial to the life sciences and engineering research communi-
ties.
−
Widely dispersed organizations can easily collaborate on projects through their
ability to share everything.
−
A more robust and resilient IT infrastructure can be created. Such an infrastructure
can respond better to minor or major disasters.
−
Idle processing cycles in several desktop PCs distributed in various locations
across multiple time zones can be harnessed.
Although, the establishment, management and exploitation of dynamic, cross-
organizational GRID Systems require full interoperability and scalability, the security
concern is also of great importance. The reason is that distributed applications are by
definition more vulnerable than conventional ones since there are substantially more
targets to attack in order to impact a single application [3].
Securing a Computational GRID that may be accessed by hundreds, or even, thou-
sands of users, is critical. In this paper we present a review and an evaluation of the
security architectures and mechanisms, which have been proposed for that purpose. In
section 2 we emphasize on the security challenges as well as the security requirements
in GRID Computing, in section 3 we present a review of existing security architec-
tures and mechanisms and we evaluate them in terms of the above-mentioned re-
quirements. Finally, in section 4 we conclude the paper.
2
Security Challenges and Requirements in GRID Computing
The overall motivation for GRID Computing is to enable access to, and sharing of,
resources and services across wide area networks. This motivation incorporates
known security challenges and requirements but also introduces new, thus necessitat-
ing the development of security architectures for the GRID.
2.1
Security Challenges
The security challenges in GRID environments can be categorized as follows [4]:
1.
Integration.
In order to build secure GRID Systems, the mechanisms being em-
ployed must be flexible and dynamic so as to facilitate the integration of security
architectures and models implemented across platforms and hosting environments.
