Abstract:In this paper we present a computational infrastructure, the Security Backbone, which is able to satisfy security requirements arising from resource sharing and services interoperability in Grid-like environments, without having to rely on a PublicKey Infrastructure (PKI). Motivation of our approach is rooted in the well-known difficulties encountered to show that interoperability of PKIs is effective or efficient in real-world environments.The proposed solution uses a security layer, lying between the communication and the application level, which provides confidentiality, integrity and authentication services in a fully transparent way from the application point of view, thus enabling the deployment of distributed network applications satisfying the highest security constraints, at a very low organizational and financial cost.Moreover, we have designed a service for scalable and flexible management of authorization policies governing access to resources shared by members of a Virtual Organization, by improving on the Community Authorization Service distributed with the Globus Toolkit. Keywords: Grid security, network security, organizational aspects of network security, inter-organizational services, authorization management. Corresponding author: Fabio Fioravanti
A Specification for Security Services on Computational GridsFranco Arcieri 1 , Fabio Fioravanti 2 , Enrico Nardelli 1 , Maurizio Talamo 1(1) NESTOR -Laboratorio Sperimentale per la Sicurezza e la Certificazione di Servizi Telematici Multimediali -Univ. of Roma "Tor Vergata", Roma, Italia (2) Dipartimento di Informatica, Univ. of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italia.Abstract. In this paper we present a computational infrastructure, the Security Backbone, which is able to satisfy security requirements arising from resource sharing and services interoperability in Grid-like environments, without having to rely on a Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI). Motivation of our approach is rooted in the well-known difficulties encountered to show that interoperability of PKIs is effective or efficient in real-world environments.The proposed solution uses a security layer, lying between the communication and the application level, which provides confidentiality, integrity and authentication services in a fully transparent way from the application point of view, thus enabling the deployment of distributed network applications satisfying the highest security constraints, at a very low organizational and financial cost. Moreover, we have designed a service for scalable and flexible management of authorization policies governing access to resources shared by members of a Virtual Organization, by improving on the Community Authorization Service distributed with the Globus Toolkit. 1Computational resources sharing between different organizations in an untrusted environment arises several issues related to information security. This is especially true on computational grids [26] where members of different organizations join a Virtual Organization (VO)...