Some time last month I posted about the national supercomputing grid under construction in Wales. Information security researchers in South Wales have proposed the Grid for Crime Prevention (G4CP) as one of its applications.
The HPC network can perform three main roles that would be potentially very useful for G4CP:
– Data Grid – Data storage and analysis
– Computational Grid – distributed parallel computation
– Knowledge Grid – Information sharing
Public details of this proposal are vague at the moment, but it would use the available processing power and information sharing capabilities to prevent and counter cyber crime, and it would be a platform for a number of tools in this area of research.
For example, organisations and agencies can deal with current threats collectively, and share data in real-time. It might also work as an extensive intrusion detection system.
Authentication and access control for G4CP by X.509 certificates has been proposed. These certificates
would be issued on an individual basis, following an interview. Each has an individual expiry, and the holder will be allowed to install it on one machine only. Together, this limits the possibility of rogue machines and accounts on the network, and effective access control and auditing.
Cryptonomicon 