The EGEE project officially ended on the 31 March 2006
EGEE II started on 1 April 2006 and the new EGEE website can be found at:
http://www.eu-egee.org
JRA3 - SECURITY
Security will be vital to the success of the Enabling Grids for E-science in Europe (EGEE) project as it is always a challenge, particularly when crossing national boundaries and covering wide geographic areas.
The purpose of the Security activity is to propose, implement and monitor the project’s security architecture. The EGEE Security team will define a security framework and architecture as well as define a set of high-level policies that will act as guidance to the other activities. Consistency among the items mentioned above provides the more visible value-adding services of the Grid - transparent security and single sign-on.
The security architecture will be based on the requirements of both Grid users and resource providers and the Security team will define and validate the security architecture in-line with these requirements.
The Security team will also address critical areas such as a basic security policy, incident response, certification authorities trust establishment and policy management.
The Security team will lead the EU-GridPMA effort (www.eugridpma.org), which has established a common pan-European trust fabric for research Grids, shared by several EU and national Grid projects as well as international partners. The body will ensure that all involved parties operate according to, or better than, an agreed and well-documented policy.
Virtual Organisations (VOZ) will be used to manage access control and accounting for multiple applications and scientific disciplines that share the same physical Grid resources. The Security team aim to enable transparent access to resources using VO-based authorisation mechanisms, whilst leaving the local administrator in control of his resources.
Rights delegation is needed so that a job running at a remote site still has the proper access privileges to other Grid resources, such as databases and storage systems.
Existing security components will be converted into OGSA compliant services during the course of the EGEE project. The Security team will monitor and participate in the creation of emerging web services security standards and apply them in the context of the EGEE software architecture.
In the past, proper management and protection of the end-user credentials used for authentication on Grids has proven difficult to maintain at an acceptable level. The EGEE Security team will investigate alternatives such as hardware devices, centralised services and services that tie into the trust fabric of a local organisation.