Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Findings Report of the 2021 Trusted CI Annual Challenge on Software Assurance Published

 As reported in this blog earlier this year, in 2021, Trusted CI is conducting our focused “annual challenge” on the assurance of software used by scientific computing and cyberinfrastructure

In July, the 2021 Trusted CI Annual Challenge team posted its initial findings in this blog.  The team is now pleased to share its detailed findings report:

Andrew Adams, Kay Avila, Elisa Heymann, Mark Krenz, Jason R. Lee, Barton Miller, and Sean Peisert. “The State of the Scientific Software World: Findings of the 2021 Trusted CI Software Assurance Annual Challenge Interviews,” September 2021.  https://hdl.handle.net/2022/26799

Now that the team has finished its examination of software assurance findings, it will turn its focus to solutions.  In accordance with that, later this calendar year, the Trusted CI team will be publishing a guide for recommended best practices for scientific software development.

For those interested in hearing more about the 2021 Annual Challenge, please (virtually) come to the team’s panel session at the 2021 NSF Cybersecurity Summit at 3:05 EDT on October 13, 2021: https://www.trustedci.org/2021-summit-program


Wednesday, September 22, 2021

SGCI Webinar: Security recommendations for science gateways, Sept 29th @ 1pm EDT

This webinar announcement was originally posted on SGCI's website.

Security recommendations for science gateways

Wednesday, September 29, 2021, 1 pm Eastern/10 am Pacific

Presented by Mark Krenz, Chief Security Analyst, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University

Trusted CI has recently published a four-page document targeted at small team science gateways. This document provides a prioritized list of security recommendations to help reduce overall security risk. In this webinar Mark Krenz, from Trusted CI, will be providing an introduction and overview of the document, as well as a discussion of the lessons learned from the last few years of providing security consultations for science gateways.

See SGCI's webinars page for the Zoom link and password.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Trusted CI webinar: Q-Factor: Real-time data transfer optimization, September 27th @11am Eastern

Members of FIU and ESnet are presenting the talk, Q-Factor: Real-time data transfer optimization leveraging In-band Network Network provided by P4 data planes, on Monday September 27th at 11am (Eastern). Our presenters are Jeronimo Bezerra, Richard Cziva, and Dr. Julio Ibarra.

Please register here.

Q-Factor is a framework to enable data transfer optimization based on real-time network state information provided by programmable data planes. Communication networks are critical components of today’s scientific workflows. Researchers leverage long-distance ultra-high-speed networks to transfer massive data sets from acquisition sites to processing sites and share measurements with scientists worldwide. However, while network bandwidth is continuously increasing, most data transfers are unable to efficiently utilize the added capacity due to inherent limitations of parameter settings of the network transport protocols and the lack of network state information at the end hosts. To address these challenges, Q-Factor plans to use sub-second network state data to dynamically configure current transport protocol and operating systems parameters to reach higher network utilization and, as a result, to improve scientific workflows. Q-Factor leverages programmable network devices with the In-band Network Telemetry (INT) framework and delivers a software solution to process in-band measurements at the end hosts. Using Q-Factor on end hots, for instance Data Transfer Nodes (DTN)s, TCP/IP parameters will be configured according to temporal network characteristics, such as round-trip time, network utilization, and network buffer occupancy. This tuning is expected to increase network utilization, shorter flow completion times, and significantly reduce packet drops caused by under-provisioned network buffers. Q-Factor is a collaboration between Florida International University and Energy Science Network.

Speaker Bio

Jeronimo Bezerra is the FIU’s Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment’s IT Associate Director. Jeronimo has 19 years of IT and Network Engineering experience, most of them with R&E networks. He is responsible for AmLight network operation and engineering, including the SDN deployment and operation. He is leading the Q-Factor design, development and deployment activities.

Richard Cziva is a software engineer at ESnet. He has a range of technical interests including traffic and performance analysis, data-plane programmability, high-speed packet processing, software-defined networking, and network function virtualization. Prior to joining ESnet in 2018, Richard was a Research Associate at University of Glasgow, where he looked at how advanced services (e.g., personalized firewalls, intrusion detection modules, measurement functions) can be implemented and managed inside wide area networks with programmable edge capabilities. Richard holds a BSc in Computer Engineering (2013) from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (2018) from University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. He will lead the research activities in Q-Factor.

As the Assistant Vice President for Technology Augmented Research at FIU, Dr. Julio Ibarra is responsible for furthering the mission of the Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA) – to contribute to the pace and the quality of research at FIU through the application of advanced Cyberinfrastructure. Has 30+ years of IT and Telecom infrastructure management, 18 of those years of specialization with Research and Education networks and project management. Dr. Ibarra will be responsible for overall project management and coordination.

Join Trusted CI's announcements mailing list for information about upcoming events. To submit topics or requests to present, see our call for presentations. Archived presentations are available on our site under "Past Events."

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Testbed Facility Security Workshop at 2021 NSF Cybersecurity Summit


The 2021 NSF Summit Workshop on Testbed Facility Security will be held Monday, October 18 from 1pm to 5pm Eastern Time as part of the 2021 NSF Cybersecurity Summit. The workshop will explore the unique cybersecurity challenges of testbed facilities, stemming from their mission to enable experimental use, including configuration of facility resources for novel networking and security experiments, which may span multiple facilities. The workshop is being co-organized by Chameleon, Colosseum, DETERLab, FABRIC, PAWR, and Trusted CI.
If you are interested in the cybersecurity challenges of experimental cloud-based testbeds, please plan to attend. Visit https://www.trustedci.org/2021-testbed-facility-security-workshop for more details.
The workshop is a follow-on activity from the Trusted CI FABRIC engagement. See https://blog.trustedci.org/search/label/FABRIC for more information about that engagement.