NSF-Sponsored Workshop to Explore Social Science Contributions to Understanding Cyber Security

There is a call for white papers, due Feb 1, for the NSF-Sponsored Workshop to Explore Social Science Contributions to Understanding Cyber Security. For information see the workshop announcement (pdf).

Software security needs survey and vulnerability handling

Last week, I was part of a panel at the NSF SI2 PI meeting. It was a good meeting discussing a lot of the challenges we are facing with sustainability and engaging the science community. Two presentations I found of particular interest were Neil Chue Hong's presentation on Software Sustaibaility (I'm very happy to have Neil on CTSC's advisory committee) and Jim Herbsleb's presentation on software ecosystems (not posted at this time unfortunately).

My presentation was on things software projects should do in order to handle vulnerabilities, something members of the CTSC team have from being leaders of software projects, from being part of the team running large production infrastructures and doing research into finding software vulnerabilities. For those wanting more information on this topic, I wrote a white paper on it a couple years ago.

I also announced that CTSC has a survey for NSF projects writing software. We'd like to better understand your projects needs, so please take a few minutes to complete it. Or if you prefer, just contact me directly at vwelch@indiana.edu or (812) 856-0363.

CTSC and LIGO Collaborate on Interfederation

CTSC and LIGO are working together to enable international access to cyberinfrastructure through interfederation.

By leveraging federated identity, LIGO seeks to streamline electronic collaboration with other gravitational wave, astronomy, and astrophysics projects throughout the world. LIGO is a member of the InCommon Federation, which enables federation with institutions in the United States but does not, at this time, address federation with entities outside the US. Today, federation with entities in Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada requires LIGO to negotiate peer-to-peer federation individually with each entity.

The CTSC-LIGO collaboration is:

• Documenting the challenges LIGO faces today when negotiating peer-to-peer federation with individual entities.
• Setting the stage for LIGO and EGO to federate in the future.
• Working to enable interfederation for LIGO through InCommon.
• Investigating and reporting on the likelihood and timescale for federation between LIGO and other entities in Europe via eduGAIN.
• Assisting LIGO-India with documenting federation use cases and engaging with federation efforts in India.
• Actively participating in REFEDS, the leading discussion and coordination forum for international interfederation.

To help enable interfederation through InCommon, the CTSC-LIGO collaboration has helped to form the InCommon TAC Interfederation Subcommittee, which is documenting InCommon community interfederation use cases, timelines, plans, issues, and recommendations. All are welcome to join in this InCommon-focused effort — please subscribe to the interfed@incommon.org e-mail list to participate.