EGI Core activities:2015-bidding Security coordination and tools

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Introduction

Security is recognised as an important aspect of e-Infrastructures and requires coordination between the EGI participants at various levels, in particular for the prevention and handling of incidents.

To keep a distributed infrastructure secure there is need for a coordination activity of the security effort at NGI and resource center level, and for tools that automatically test the EGI sites for vulnerabilities.

Technical description

The security coordination activities must liaise with the resource providers (~40 among NGIs and EIROS) the resource centres (~350) and oversee the technologies used in the production infrastructure, for example: O.S. Platforms, HTC, Cloud, Storage, AAI capabilities.

The service includes the following components.

Coordination

• Security Operations Coordination - Central coordination of the security activities ensures that policies, operational security, and maintenance are compatible amongst all partners, improving availability and lowering access barriers for use of the infrastructure. This coordination ensures that incidents are promptly and efficiently handled, that common policies are followed by providing services such as security monitoring, and by training and dissemination with the goal of improving the response to incidents. This includes liaison with external security organisations, coordination security training, of security service challenges and of security threat risk assessment.

• Security Policy Coordination - Security policy development covers diverse aspects, including operational policies (agreements on vulnerability management, intrusion detection and prevention, regulation of access, and enforcement), incident response policies (governing the exchange of information and expected actions), participant responsibilities (including acceptable use policies, identifying users and managing user communities), traceability, legal aspects, and the protection of personal data. Since research is global, such policies must be coordinated with peer infrastructures in Europe and elsewhere, such as PRACE, Open Science Grid, XSEDE, and like efforts in the Asia Pacific. Coordination mechanisms such as the FIM4R group, TERENA REFEDS, SCI, Open Grid Forum and the IGTF will need to be employed.