The start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, presents a huge challenge in processing and analysing the vast amounts of scientific data that will be produced. The architecture of the worldwide grid that will handle 15 PB of particle physics data annually from this machine is based on a hierarchical tiered structure. We describe the development of the UK component (GridPP) of this grid from a prototype system to a full exploitation grid for real data analysis. This includes the physical infrastructure, the deployment of middleware, operational experience and the initial exploitation by the major LHC experiments.
The Certification Authority Coordination Group in the European DataGrid project has created a large-scale Public Key Infrastructure and the policies and procedures to operate it successfully. The infrastructure demonstrates interoperability of multiple certification authorities (CAs) in a novel system of peer-assessment of the roots of trust. Crucial to the assessment is the definition of minimum requirements that all CAs must meet in order to be accepted. The evaluation is aided by software-generated trust matrices. Related work building on this infrastructure is described. The group's policies and experience now form the basis of the new European Policy Management Authority for Grid Authentication in e-Science.
The Security for Collaborating Infrastructures (SCI) group is a collaborative activity of information security officers from several large-scale distributed computing infrastructures, including EGI, OSG, PRACE, EUDAT, CHAIN, WLCG, and XSEDE. SCI is developing a framework to enable interoperation of collaborating Grids with the aim of managing cross-Grid operational security risks and to build trust and develop policy standards for collaboration especially in cases where we cannot just share identical security policy documents.
Federated identity management (FIM) is an arrangement that can be made among multiple organisations that lets subscribers use the same identification data to obtain access to the secured resources of all organisations in the group. In many research communities there is an increasing interest in a common approach to FIM as there is obviously a large potential for synergies. FIM4R [1] provides a forum for communities to share challenges and ideas, and to shape the future of FIM for our researchers. Current participation covers high energy physics, life sciences and humanities, to mention but a few. In 2012 FIM4R converged on a common vision for FIM, enumerated a set of requirements and proposed a number of recommendationsfor ensuring a roadmap for the uptake of FIM [2]. In summer 2018, FIM4R published an updated version of this paper [3]. The High Energy Physics (HEP) Community has been heavily involved in creating both the original white paper and the new version, which documented the progress made in FIM for Research, in addition to the current challenges. This paper presents the conclusions of this second FIM4R white paper and a summary of the identified requirements and recommendations. We focus particularly on the direction being taken by the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), through the WLCG Authorisation Working Group, and the requirements gathered from the HEP Community.
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