[communities] GGF Proposal Submission

[lajoie at georgetown.edu]

proposers_name: Chad La Joie 
 
affiliation: Georgetown University/Internet2 

email: lajoie at georgetown.edu 

proposed_title: User Management and Access Control within the Grid 

session_type: Presentation w/ Q&A 

proposed_duration: 60 minutes 

target_audience: managers, developers 

num_attendees: unknown 

abstract: Grid toolkits enable rich fabrics of resources to be used together but only provider simplistic authentication and access control mechanism.  This talk will focus on how new and emerging identity management and access control technologies and standards can help produce more secure, manageable, and scalable grid systems. 

synopsis: This talk will focus on two main areas:
* Mechanisms for authenticating and collecting identity attributes for users.  Special attention will be given to protecting users\' credentials, securely and selectively making their identity attributes available to a service, and building a strong fabric of trust between services and identity holders.
* Using an individual\'s identity information within an attribute-based authorization infrastructure that provides more expressive access control policies for services.  Tools for managing these access policies outside of, and across, services will be presented.

After each of these areas is explored a case will be made that such an infrastructure will reduce the complexity of interacting with grids, for the user, and ease management of them for administrators.  A use case will be presented demonstrating how some of the technologies and standards covered in the talk have produced noticeable gains in administration.  Finally, the talk will wrap up with suggestion on steps that might be taken to move forward and then questions and answers.

This talk will not be highly technical but attendees should have a basic understanding of XML, HTTP, and the web services concept. 

tech_requirements:  

prereq_participants: Basic understanding of XML, HTTP, web services, and an identity management system (such as LDAP, Active Directory, Novell, etc) 

advertise_suggestion: