Grid Security Policy Monitoring System (GridSPMS): Towards Monitoring the Security Dimension in Grids

Grid computing systems are complex and dynamic environments requiring appropriate automated management mechanisms, which would enable stable and reliable operation of the whole grid ecosystem. Moreover, the recent novel concept of mobile grid computing – a combination of grid systems with mobile devices – also requires new ways of monitoring the emerging security aspects, associated with the ever-increasing role of network connections in mobile grids. Existing grid monitoring systems, albeit suitable for traditional, localised grid systems, seem to be ignoring the security dimension and do not offer appropriate support for enforcing security policies within a distributed grid system enhanced with mobile devices. Accordingly, in this paper we present the Grid Security Policy Monitoring System (GridSPMS) – a novel grid monitoring framework, which extends the traditional support for data monitoring (i.e., tools, protocols, etc.) with mechanisms for collecting run-time data within grids, focussing on the security dimension. By doing so, GridSPMS aims at monitoring the activity within a grid system and detect situations, where security policies have been potentially violated and, therefore, appropriate response actions have to be taken in this respect. Accordingly, GridSPMS has the potential to address security threats existing in the domain of mobile grid computing, and enable grid administrators with support for timely detection of and response to security-related incidents.