Toward an On-Demand Restricted Delegation Mechanism for Grids

Grids are intended to enable cross-organizational interactions which makes Grid security a challenging and nontrivial issue. In Grids, delegation is a key facility that can be used to authenticate and authorize requests on behalf of disconnected users. In current Grid systems there is a tradeoff between flexibility and security in the context of delegation. Applications must choose between limited or full delegation: on one hand, delegating a restricted set of rights reduces exposure to attack but also limits the flexibility/dynamism of the application; on the other hand, delegating all rights provides maximum flexibility but increases exposure. In this paper, we propose an on-demand restricted delegation mechanism, aimed at addressing the shortcomings of current delegation mechanisms by providing restricted delegation in a flexible fashion as needed for Grid applications. This mechanism provides an ontology-based solution for tackling one the most challenging issues in security system...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: GRID
• Authors: Mehran Ahsant, Jim Basney, Olle Mulmo, Adam J. Lee, S. Lennart Johnsson
• Keywords: Delegation Mechanisms, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Grid, GRID 2006, On-demand Restricted Delegation