Implementation of a Distributed Architecture for Managing Collection and Dissemination of Data for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

We implemented a distributed system for management of data for an international collaboration studying Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). Subject privacy was protected, researchers without dependable Internet access were accommodated, and researchers’ data were shared globally. Data dictionaries codified the nature of the data being integrated, data compliance was assured through multiple consistency checks, and recovery systems provided a secure, robust, persistent repository. The system enabled new types of science to be done, using distributed technologies that are expedient for current needs while taking useful steps towards integrating the system in a future grid-based cyberinfrastructure. The distributed architecture, verification steps, and data dictionaries suggest general strategies for researchers involved in collaborative studies, particularly where data must be de-identified before being shared. The system met both the collaboration’s needs and the NIH Roadmap’s goal of wide access to databases that are robust and adaptable to researchers’ needs

Enhanced security architecture for support of credential repository in grid computing.

Grid Computing involves heterogeneous computers and resources, multiple administrative domains and the mechanisms and techniques for establishing and maintaining effective and secure communications between devices and systems. Both authentication and authorization are required. Current authorization models in each domain vary from one system to another, which makes it difficult for users to obtain authorization across multiple domains at one time. We propose an enhanced security architecture to provide support for decentralized authorization based on attribute certificates which may be accessed via the Internet. This allows the administration of privileges to be widely distributed over the Internet in support of autonomy for resource owners and providers. In addition, it provides a uniform approach for authorization which may be used by resource providers from various domains. We combine authentication with the authorization mechanism by using both MyProxy online credential repository and LDAP directory server. In our architecture, we use MyProxy server to store identity certificates for authentication, and utilize an LDAP server-based architecture to store attribute certificates for authorization. Using a standard web browser, a user may connect to a grid portal and allow the portal to retrieve those certificates in order to access grid resources on behalf of the user. Thus, our approach can make use of the online credential repository to integrate authentication, delegation and attribute based access control together to provide enhanced, flexible security for grid system. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .C54. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-01, page: 0231. Adviser: R. D. Kent. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

SciTokens: Capability-Based Secure Access to Remote Scientific Data

The management of security credentials (e.g., passwords, secret keys) for computational science workflows is a burden for scientists and information security officers. Problems with credentials (e.g., expiration, privilege mismatch) cause workflows to fail to fetch needed input data or store valuable scientific results, distracting scientists from their research by requiring them to diagnose the problems, re-run their computations, and wait longer for their results. In this paper, we introduce SciTokens, open source software to help scientists manage their security credentials more reliably and securely. We describe the SciTokens system architecture, design, and implementation addressing use cases from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) projects. We also present our integration with widely-used software that supports distributed scientific computing, including HTCondor, CVMFS, and XrootD. SciTokens uses IETF-standard OAuth tokens for capability-based secure access to remote scientific data. The access tokens convey the specific authorizations needed by the workflows, rather than general-purpose authentication impersonation credentials, to address the risks of scientific workflows running on distributed infrastructure including NSF resources (e.g., LIGO Data Grid, Open Science Grid, XSEDE) and public clouds (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure). By improving the interoperability and security of scientific workflows, SciTokens 1) enables use of distributed computing for scientific domains that require greater data protection and 2) enables use of more widely distributed computing resources by reducing the risk of credential abuse on remote systems.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Security oriented e-infrastructures supporting neurological research and clinical trials

The neurological and wider clinical domains stand to gain greatly from the vision of the grid in providing seamless yet secure access to distributed, heterogeneous computational resources and data sets. Whilst a wealth of clinical data exists within local, regional and national healthcare boundaries, access to and usage of these data sets demands that fine grained security is supported and subsequently enforced. This paper explores the security challenges of the e-health domain, focusing in particular on authorization. The context of these explorations is the MRC funded VOTES (Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies) and the JISC funded GLASS (Glasgow early adoption of Shibboleth project) which are developing Grid infrastructures for clinical trials with case studies in the brain trauma domain