Federated Grids and their Security

Introduction We examine issues involved in creating “virtual Grids” out of specific Grid installations. We see it as inevitable that Grids will be established as islands of resource collections that will need to be federated in lightweight manners. These islands of resources may result from a number of reasons. First, a group may set up a Grid of resources that it owns and directly controls but must overcome sociological and /or organizational barriers for interoperating with other Grid installations, even when the same software is used. Second, we see the emergence of Grids built out of differing substrate technologies with perhaps incompatible communication systems.