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Grid Security Infrastructure
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<h2 id="authentication">Authentication</h2> <p>Authentication is performed using digital signature technology (see <a href="/facts/Digital_signatures/tY7e2pnW">digital signatures</a> for an explanation of how this works); secure authentication allows resources to lock data to only those who should have access to it. </p> <h3>Delegation</h3> <p>Authentication introduces a problem: often a service will have to retrieve data from a resource independent of the user; in order to do this, it must be supplied with the appropriate privileges. GSI allows for the creation of delegated privileges: a new key is created, marked as a delegated and signed by the user; it is then possible for a service to act on behalf of the user to fetch data from the resource. </p> <h2 id="security-mechanisms">Security mechanisms</h2> <p>Communications may be secured using a combination of methods: </p> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Transport_Layer_Security/pGy16TnA">Transport Layer Security</a> (TLS) can be used to protect the communication channel from <a href="/facts/Eavesdropping/Rkqmt8I2">eavesdropping</a> or <a href="/facts/Man-in-the-middle_attack/dx4cojdz">man-in-the-middle attacks</a>.</li> <li><a href="/facts/WS-Security/T7v5kCJt">Message-Level Security</a> can be used (although currently[<i>when?</i>] it is much slower than TLS).</li></ul> <ul><li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140721232100/http://www.globus.org/ftppub/globus/papers/security.pdf">A Security Infrastructure for Computational Grids</a> by <a href="/facts/Ian_Foster_(computer_scientist)/zXQBp4av">Ian Foster</a> et al.</li> <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130825060936/http://globus.org/alliance/publications/papers/butler.pdf">A National-Scale Authentication Infrastructure</a> by Randy Butler et al.</li></ul> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010527095836/http://www.globus.org/Security/overview.html">Overview of the Grid Security Infrastructure</a></li></ul>