Security policy management in federated computing environments

The default Java implementation for security policies based on policy files doesn’t comply with the specific needs of metacomputing environments. Managing a large number of policy files for all Java runtime systems in the metacomputing system doesn’t scale. This paper presents a federated approach for security policy management in Javabased metacomputing systems. Security policies are stored in a policy base, which is managed by its policy service provider (Policer). The policy base and its Policer are replicated and the replicated policy bases are synchronized with each other in order to avoid a single point of failure. Any bootstrapping service provider gets its security policy dynamically from any available Policer in the network. The proposed solution ensures uniform policy-based authorization for all the services in the SORCER metacomputing environment through the use of the dynamic policy management methodology.