Dynamic Firewalls and Service Deployment Models for Grid Environments

Overview

The ubiquitous deployment of firewalls at the border between external and corporate network segments has brought significant improvements in protection against malicious code and unwanted traffic. However, the traditional client-server paradigm supported by most of today's firewall does not accommodate the specific requirements of novel Grid applications. This paper presents two different approaches to partially overcome the limitations in Grid computing introduced by firewalls. The first method, based on the extension of firewall implementations, intends to enable a "dynamic" behavior of the firewall itself. The second approach aims at minimizing the interactions between Grid applications and firewalls, through the definition of a firewall-friendly, homogeneous and consistent deployment of Grid middleware across all entities participating in a Virtual Organization.