Towards an infrastructure for MLS distributed computing

OF THE THESIS Pilot based frameworks for Weather Research Forecasting by Dinesh Prasanth Ganapathi Thesis Director: Dr. Shantenu Jha The Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) domain consists of complex workflows that demand the use of Distributed Computing Infrastructure (DCI). Weather forecasting requires that weather researchers use different set of initial conditions and one or a combination of physics models on the same set of input data. For these type of simulations an ensemble based computing approach becomes imperative. Most DCIs have local job-schedulers that have no smart way of dealing with the execution of an ensemble type of computational problem as the job-schedulers are built to cater to the bare essentials of resource allocation. This means the weather scientists have to submit multiple jobs to the job-scheduler. In this dissertation we use Pilot-Job based tools to decouple work-load submission and resource allocation therefore streamlining the complex workflows in Weather Research and Forecasting domain and reduce their overall time to completion. We also achieve location independent job execution, data movement, placement and processing. Next, we create the necessary enablers to run an ensemble of tasks bearing the capability to run on multiple heterogeneous distributed computing resources there by creating the opportunity to minimize the overall time consumed in running the models. Our experiments show that the tools developed exhibit very good, strong and weak scaling characteristics. These results bear the potential to change the way weather researchers are submitting traditional WRF jobs to the

A growing number of very simple parallel applications can benefit from the availability of very large computing resource pools that are exploited in an opportunistic way to considerably speed up the processing of these applications. In particular, many applications can scale out to take advantage of the availability of thousands, or even millions, of processors that can be simultaneously used. Some large-scale distributed computing infrastructures (DCI) have already been successfully assembled to this end. However, these DCI are normally designed to cater to specific kinds of applications, and their assemblage is not only costly, but also time consuming. We propose a novel architecture, named OddCI (On-demand DCI), for the cheap, fast and on-demand instantiation and dismantle of very large DCI. These characteristics allow application users to dynamically commission DCI that can cost-effectively be customized to their particular needs, and disposed after being used. Our approach leverages on broadcast communication as an efficient mechanism to enable aggregation of geographically distributed computing resources, including millions of non-traditional processing devices such as mobile phones, and digital television (DTV) receivers. We discuss how the proposed architecture can be implemented on top of a network of DTV receivers, providing evidences of both the technical, as well as the operational feasibility of the OddCI architecture.

In this paper, we address job scheduling in Distributed Computing Infrastructures, that is a loosely coupled network of autonomous acting High Performance Computing systems. In contrast to the common approach of mutual workload exchange, we consider the more intuitive operator's viewpoint of load-dependent resource reconfiguration. In case of a site's over-utilization, the scheduling system is able to lease resources from other sites to keep up service quality for its local user community. Contrary, the granting of idle resources can increase utilization in times of low local workload and thus ensure higher efficiency. The evaluation considers real workload data and is done with respect to common service quality indicators. For two simple resource exchange policies and three basic setups we show the possible gain of this approach and analyze the dynamics in workload-adaptive reconfiguration behavior.

United States Government (USG) organizations rely on data analytics systems to uncover patterns and trends, driving effective resource allocation and fostering innovation. Equally critical is deploying cybersecurity data analytics systems (CDAS) to detect and counteract malicious activities proactively. Government organizations must abide by regulatory and executive branch mandates, which are custodians of sensitive data, national security information, and critical infrastructure. Ensuring this data's integrity, confidentiality, and availability is paramount to maintaining public trust and national security. This study addresses a crucial gap by empirically investigating the technological and organizational factors that impact the success of CDAS with USG agencies. Integrating the diffusion of innovation (DOI) and resource-based view (RBV) constructs, we explore the extent to which Compatibility (COMP), Trialability (TRI), Learning and Growth (LAG), and Internal Processes (IP) predict USG CDAS implementation success. Data collected from cybersecurity and information technology (IT) professionals were rigorously analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that COMP, TRI, LAG, and IP significantly enhance system success, underscoring the critical importance of these technological and organizational considerations. Our study highlights that robust organizational support and strategic processes are paramount to fortifying cybersecurity posture and sustaining competitive advantage, ensuring US government agencies' cyber resilience and security in an increasingly threat-prone environment. This study empirically examines government organizations and captures the perceptions of the cybersecurity and IT professionals that safeguard the nations against sophisticated cyber threats, protect sensitive information, and maintain the continuity of essential services, enhancing national security and public trust.

To demonstrate compliance with privacy and security principles, information technology (IT) service providers often rely on security standards and certifications. However, the appearance of new service models such as cloud computing has brought new threats to information assurance, weakening the protection that existing standards can provide. In this study, we analyze four highly regarded IT security standards used to assess, improve, and demonstrate information systems assurance and cloud security. ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2, C5, and FedRAMP are standards adopted worldwide and constantly updated and improved since the first release of ISO in 2005. We examine their adequacy in addressing current threats to cloud security, and provide an overview of the evolution over the years of their ability to cope with threats and vulnerabilities. By comparing the standards alongside each other, we investigate their complementarity, their redundancies, and the level of protection they offer to information stored in cloud systems. We unveil vulnerabilities left unaddressed in the four frameworks, thus questioning the necessity of multiple standards to assess cloud assurance. We suggest necessary improvements to meet the security requirements made indispensable by the current threat landscape.

The objectives of the System Security track of the 2nd International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology were to discuss in depth the current state of the research and practice in computer security with emphasis on network and distributed systems security, enable participants to benefit from personal contact with other researchers and expand their knowledge and disseminate the research results. This volume contains the 10 papers that were presented at the System Security track of the conference. These papers which had been selected from 77 submissions were rigorously reviewed by members of the Program Committee comprising of internationally recognized researchers in the area of computer security. The topics covered include a broad range of sub-areas – from emerging areas such as security issues in mobile and ad-hoc networks, security policy integration and code fingerprinting, to more traditional areas such as digital watermarking, intrusion detection and defense against virus and worms. These papers, the program committee believes, address some of the most pressing needs of the day for computer security. We would like to thank all the authors for submitting reports of their leading edge research to this conference and making it a success. A special thank you goes to the members of the System Security track program committee and other external reviewers who helped with the review process in spite of their busy schedule.

The US Federal Information Systems Modernization Act (FISMA) included a mandate for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to modernise and create new methods of strengthening the US Government’s cyber security posture. NIST answered this call with the creation of the risk management framework (RMF). RMF has received criticism and has been viewed as ineffective and a potential failure. This quantitative research investigated the relationship between receiving formal RMF training and perceptions of RMF effectiveness, RMF commitment and RMF sustainability. The research proposed that the receipt of formalised RMF training would increase the perceptions of RMF effectiveness, RMF commitment and RMF sustainability in RMF practitioners. A convenience sample of 81 RMF practitioners responded to an online survey assessing perceived competence of RMF effectiveness, RMF commitment and RMF sustainability as well as the amount of formal RMF training hours they had received. The data was analysed utilising statistical methods of descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson’s correlations. Based on the results of this study, a significant, positive relationship exists between the receipt of formalised RMF training and perceptions of RMF effectiveness. Statistical significance can be seen in ANOVA tests where there was a significant difference in the mean effective perceived competency scales (PCS) scores among those with varied levels of formal RMF training (MS = 5.388), (F [2,78] = 3.645, p < .05). Pearson’s correlation also indicated that there was a significant positive association with the effective PCS score and the amount of training received category (r = .253, n = 81, p = .023). Understanding the relationship between perceptions of RMF effectiveness and the receipt of formalised RMF training may be helpful in driving effective RMF implementation throughout the US Government and contractor community, minimising the likelihood that US Government systems are compromised via cyber security breaches.

Nowadays visualization-based knowledge discovery can play an important role in astrophysics. Collaborative visualization can enable multiple users to share visualization experiences, e.g. by interacting simultaneously with astrophysical datasets giving feedback on what other participants are doing/seeing. Further, workflow-driven applications allow reproduction of specific visualization results, a challenging task as selecting suitable visualization parameters may not be a straightforward process. This paper presents VisIVO Science Gateway, a web-based workflow-enabled framework integrating large-scale, multidimensional datasets and applications for visualization and data filtering on Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs). Advanced users are able to create, change, invoke, and monitor workflows while standard users are provided with easy-to-use customised web interfaces hiding all technical aspects of the visualization algorithms and DCI configurations.

The purpose of this panel is to provide a forum to discuss the main IT security issues confronting organizations today. The panelists and attendees will discuss the existing gap between current IT security practices vs. best practices based on survey trends on IT security for the past 5 years, explore popular models used to justify IT security investments, and showcase some of the most popular hacking tools to demonstrate why it is so easy to compromise organizational IT security assets. The panel will conclude by discussing the emerging IT security standards and practices that may help deter, detect, and mitigate the impact of cyber-attacks. As the title suggests, we posit the question: Is Managing IT Security a Mirage?

Computational Grids, emerging as an infrastructure for next generation computing, enable the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed resources for solving large-scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. As the resources in the Grid are heterogeneous and geographically distributed with varying availability and a variety of usage and cost policies for diverse users at different times and, priorities as well as goals that vary with time. The management of resources and application scheduling in such a large and distributed environment is a complex task. This thesis proposes a distributed computational economy as an effective metaphor for the management of resources and application scheduling. It proposes an architectural framework that supports resource trading and quality of services based scheduling. It enables the regulation of supply and demand for resources and provides an incentive for resource owners for participating in the Grid and motives the users to trade-off between the deadline, budget, and the required level of quality of service. The thesis demonstrates the capability of economic-based systems for peer-to-peer distributed computing by developing users' quality-of-service requirements driven scheduling strategies and algorithms. It demonstrates their effectiveness by performing scheduling experiments on the World-Wide Grid for solving parameter sweep applications.

The explosion of Information Technology (IT) in the commercial sector in the 1990's has led to billion dollar corporations overtaking the US Government (e.g., DARPA, NSF) as the leaders in IT research and development. The tenacity of the IT industry in accelerating technology development, in response to commercial demands, has actually provided government organizations with a unique opportunity to incorporate robust commercial IT into their individual applications. This development allows government agencies to focus their limited funds on the application aspects of their problems by leveraging commercial information technology developments. This paradigm applies directly to counterdrug enforcement and support. This paper describes a system that applies the state-of-the-art in information technology to news and information exploitation to produce a Multi-media Agent Monitoring and Assessment (MAMA) system capable of tracking information for field agent use, identifying assets of organizations and individuals for seizure, and disrupting drug shipping routes.© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

This report has two objectives. First, we describe a set of the production distributed infrastructures currently available, so that the reader has a basic understanding of them. This includes explaining why each infrastructure was created and made available and how it has succeeded and failed. The set is not complete, but we believe it is representative. Second, we describe the infrastructures in terms of their use, which is a combination of how they were designed to be used and how users have found ways to use them. Applications are often designed and created with specific infrastructures in mind, with both an appreciation of the existing capabilities provided by those infrastructures and an anticipation of their future capabilities. Here, the infrastructures we discuss were often designed and created with specific applications in mind, or at least specific types of applications. The reader should understand how the interplay between the infrastructure providers and the users leads to such usages, which we call usage modalities. These usage modalities are really abstractions that exist between the infrastructures and the applications; they influence the infrastructures by representing the applications, and they influence the ap- plications by representing the infrastructures.

There are many variables that can affect lithographic dependent device yield. Because of this, it is not enough to make optical proximity corrections (OPC) based on the mask type, wavelength, lens, illumination-type and coherence. Resist chemistry and physics along with substrate, exposure, and all post-exposure processing must be considered too. Only a holistic approach to finding imaging solutions will accelerate yield and maximize performance. Since experiments are too costly in both time and money, accomplishing this takes massive amounts of accurate simulation capability. Our solution is to create a workbench that has a set of advanced user applications that utilize best-in-class simulator engines for solving litho-related DFM problems using distributive computing. Our product, ProLE (Programmable Lithography Engine), is an integrated system that combines Petersen Advanced Lithography Inc.'s (PAL's) proprietary applications and cluster management software wrapped around commercial software engines, along with optional commercial hardware and software. It uses the most rigorous lithography simulation engines to solve deep sub-wavelength imaging problems accurately and at speeds that are several orders of magnitude faster than current methods. Specifically, ProLE uses full vector thin-mask aerial image models or when needed, full across source 3D electromagnetic field simulation to make accurate aerial image predictions along with calibrated resist models;. The ProLE workstation from Petersen Advanced Lithography, Inc., is the first commercial product that makes it possible to do these intensive calculations at a fraction of a time previously available thus significantly reducing time to market for advance technology devices. In this work, ProLE is introduced, through model comparison to show why vector imaging and rigorous resist models work better than other less rigorous models, then some applications of that use our distributive computing solution are shown. Topics covered describe why ProLE solutions are needed from an economic and technical aspect, a high level discussion of how the distributive system works, speed benchmarking, and finally, a brief survey of applications including advanced aberrations for lens sensitivity and flare studies, optical-proximity-correction for a bitcell and an application that will allow evaluation of the potential of a design to have systematic failures during fabrication.

18 - Ground station networks

To establish a planning basis for future avionics systems, the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) conducted an avionics architecture investigation during 1992–1993, culminating in a final report published in August 1993. In the course of the study, U.S. Industry provided significant information to a NAVAIR avionics database for both technologies and systems integration methods. From the study emerged an implementation strategy to allow NAVAIR to develop effective avionics systems in the future that use commercial products and standards where applicable but also allow the ready use of new and emerging technologies. Recommended strategies concentrate on the development process, especially the use of sound systems engineering techniques and the maximum practical use of commercial standards and products. This paper reviews the methodology employed during the NAVAIR investigation, and presents the key findings and resulting implementation strategies. The paper concludes with a brief summary of current implementation plans at NAVAIR.