Grid computing is a newly developed technology for complex systems with large-scale resource sharing and multi-institutional collaboration. The prominent feature of grid computing is the collaboration of multiple entities to perform collaborative tasks that rely on two fundamental functions: communication and resource sharing. Since the Internet is not security-oriented by design, there exist various attacks, in particular malicious internal and external users. Securing grid communication and controlling access to shared resources in a fine-tuned manner are important issues for grid services. This paper proposes an elegant Dual-Level Key Management (DLKM) mechanism using an innovative concept/construction of Access Control Polynomial (ACP) and one-way functions. The first level provides a flexible and secure group communication technology while the second level offers hierarchical access control. Complexity analysis and Simulation demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed DLKM in both computational grid and data grid. An example is illustrated.

Grid computing is a newly developed technology focusing on large-scale resource sharing, multi-institution collaboration, and wide-area cooperation. The most important character on grid computing is its large scale, which is also the hardest challenge on ensuring its security and reliability, because human management systems are obsolete to handle such a large infrastructure. The consequence is that the grid system and services are more failure prone or vulnerable by malicious external attacks (such as hackers) and by internal system failures (such as software and hardware faults). Therefore, there is a great need for a new approach or mechanism that can effectively improve reliability and ensure security in the grid computing. This paper presents an autonomic approach that enables the grid computing systems to self-improve the reliability and self-protect from malicious actions.

Data access and communication is a necessary operation in information systems. Achieving high dependability is an important issue in the Grid-based information system (GBIS). This paper presents a novel framework built upon grid computing for data access, which significantly enhances different aspects of the GBIS including performance, reliability and security. A set of new services are proposed and integrated into the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA), including the dual-level key management, caching and coherence service, backup and recovery service, fault-tolerant service, fault-detection service, diagnosis service, and curing service.