The effects of security choices and limits in a metacomputing environment

Abstract

It is anticipated that the introduction of metacomputing and distributed resource management mechanisms to the Internet and World Wide Web will make available to users and applications a large diversity of previously unavailable network and computing resources. New methods of managing the scheduling and allocation of distributed resources bring into focus new problems and approaches for managing security in those contexts. We present an analysis layered and variable security services and requirements. These services and requirements may be accessed via a network control program such as a Resource Management System (RMS) which is responsible for scheduling resources in distributed heterogeneous environments. The RMS will not present the same "virtual computer/network" to the same job each time it is submitted for execution. Each instance will be comprised of potentially different actual resources with different properties. Our objective is to understand how user and application requirements, characterized as choices and limits, can affect the overall security provided. A method is presented for fairly measuring the effectiveness of an RMS in performing security allocation and assignments with respect to security choices made by metacomputer users and applications.