Super-computers aren't super-secure

US National Science Foundation flings US$5 million at scientific computing infosec

America's National Science Foundation is slinging US$5 million to help improve the security of scientific high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

The money will be spent by the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC), run by the universities of Illinois and Wisconsin-Madison, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Centre (PSC).

There's to be an talkfest, the first of which will be convened by PSC's security officer James Marstellar, while Jim Basney of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications will lead CTSC's identity and access management efforts.

As well as inheriting the security challenges that the rest of the IT sector faces, the media release announcing the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence notes, the platforms used in scientific computing and its collaborative nature add complexity to the problem.

The CTSC adds that it will be helping scientific computing users on everyday decisions like choosing technologies for “identity management, authentication, authorisation and auditing”.

As well as the technical aspects of security, Indiana University's Von Welch says the organisation also recognises the importance of “legal questions, policy questions, economic factors, and human factors”. ®