A Framework for Handling Security Problems in Grid Environment using Web Services Security Specifications

Grid Computing aims to integrate large number of heterogeneous, geographically distributed resources and services to create the illusion of a simple and powerful virtual supercomputer. Clearly, security is a serious concern in such a big environment. The environment needs to be secure in terms of access and communication in order for it to be widely used and acceptable. The large number of user base and administrative domains, with differing security requirements, policies and trust relationships, interact in a complex manner to access resources. This give rise to security problems that are not addressed by traditional distributed computing environments. This paper presents, at a high level, web services security specifications based security model to address security requirements of grid services. The model is simple, flexible, adaptable and is based on extended use of web services security specifications. We also present a prototype implementation of the proposed model.