Sep 2020: ACCORD: Integrating CI policy and mechanism to support research on sensitive data

University of Virginia's Ron Hutchins, Tho Nguyen, and Neal Magee, present ACCORD: Integrating CI policy and mechanism to support research on sensitive data.

Today, a large number of researchers do not have access to secure, compliance-capable research computing infrastructure at their home institutions. Traditional institutional secure CI only supports “in-house” users. The ACCORD project is set up to address the challenge of scaling institutional secure research computing services to support community users. To accomplish this goal, we are deploying a policy-centric cyberinfrastructure that prioritizes security, compliance, and accessibility. In this presentation, we describe ACCORD’s approach of leveraging the latest CI tools to compartmentalize research environments into reusable containers that can be catalogued and managed. For example, we rely on InCommon federation to streamline user authentication hurdles, COmanage to lessen user onboarding and management difficulties, and containers coupled with a web-driven interface to alleviate the user accessibility burden. The challenge is to, hopefully, hit the right levels of simplicity and security for a variety of users. In this presentation we will also share the current project status, lessons learned, and future goals. Discussion will be welcome.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Ronald R. Hutchins currently serves as Vice President for Information Technology. In this role, Ron focuses on creating a university-wide strategy in IT for teaching, learning, research, and administrative technologies while honoring the University’s deep culture and tradition. Prior to joining UVA, Ron served as Associate Vice Provost for Research and Technology, Chief Technology Officer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.