Secure access to grid information service using Shibboleth and PERMIS

Security underpins Grids and e-Research. Without a\ud robust, reliable and simple Grid security infrastructure\ud combined with commonly accepted security practices, large\ud portions of the research community and wider industry will not\ud engage. The predominant way in which security is currently\ud addressed in the Grid community is through Public Key\ud Infrastructures (PKI) based upon X.509 certificates to support\ud authentication. Whilst PKIs address user identity issues,\ud authentication does not provide fine grained control over what\ud users are allowed to do on remote resources (authorization). In\ud this paper we outline how we have successfully combined\ud Shibboleth and advanced authorization technologies to provide\ud simplified (from the user perspective) but fine grained security\ud for access to and usage of Grid resources. We demonstrate this\ud approach through different security focused e-Science projects\ud being conducted at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the\ud University of Glasgow. We believe that this model will be more\ud widely applicable and encourage the further uptake of e-Science\ud by non-IT specialists in the research communities