A security architecture for high performance computing facilities

McMahon, Peter and Hutchison, Andrew (2006) A security architecture for high performance computing facilities, Proceedings of Information Security South Africa, 04 - 07 July 2006, Balalaika Hotel, Sandton, South Africa.

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Abstract

High Performance Computing facilities that use cluster computing to provide computational services to scientists and engineers have become widespread, with such facilities available at most major research universities worldwide, as well as in government and industrial research settings. Until recently HPC facilities have largely neglected security, or at the very least treated security as an afterthought in a world where performance is the number one priority. In this paper we present a security architecture, and associated security best practices, for high performance computing facilities. Our architecture aims to address concerns about HPC security raised in the literature [1-4], and specifically to mitigate the risks identified in the leading threat model for cluster computing [5], developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Our architecture and best practices attempt to provide the best tradeoff between adequate security measures and high performance. We also consider privacy and intellectual property issues, and how shared HPC facilities may put measures in place to convince their users that their data is protected from both external threats and internal, authorized cluster users not affiliated with their projects.

Item Type:	Conference paper
Additional Information:	Accepted as a Work in Progress Paper
Uncontrolled Keywords:	High Performance Computing, Cluster Computing, Network Architecture, Intellectual Property, Access Control
Date Deposited:	12 Jul 2006
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 15:35
URI:	http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/312

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