April 2023: Cybersecurity Operations for the NSF ACCESS Cyberinfrastructure

On September 1, 2022, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS Cyberinfrastructure started production operations, ushering in a new era following two decades of cooperative cyberinfrastructure partnerships among several leading centers for High Performance Computing (HPC) at U.S. universities and research institutions under the NSF TeraGrid and XSEDE projects. The NSF ACCESS Cyberinfrastucture is composed of five funded projects, including an ACCESS Coordination Office and four tracks representing (1) resource allocations, (2) user support and training, (3) operations, including cybersecurity, data management and networking, and (4) monitoring and measurement services. ACCESS Resource Provider (RP) sites include several NSF-funded HPC systems deployed at U.S. universities and research facilities nationwide, on which computing time and storage are allocated on a peer-reviewed basis managed through the ACCESS project.

In this webinar, we will describe the functions and activities of the ACCESS Cybersecurity Operations Group, and summarize the progress, challenges, and lessons learned in its first year. Topics will include authentication and identity management (AIM), cybersecurity communications and readiness, policy development, and future directions.

Speaker Bio:

Derek Simmel's career in Cybersecurity and HPC spans over four decades. Derek joined the technical staff of the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute in 1995. He brought his experience to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) in 2001. Derek is currently a co-PI for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS COre National Ecosystem for CyberinfrasTructure (CONECT) project, and leads Cybersecurity Operations for ACCESS. He also provides infrastructure design, cybersecurity and scientific workflow support for PSC's NSF-funded Bridges-2 system, and PSC's NIH-funded Brain Image Library, HuBMAP, and ANTON projects. Since 2011, Derek has chaired The Americas Grid Policy Management Authority (TAGPMA), one of three PMAs that comprise the Interoperable Global Trust Foundation (IGTF). He has served on the Technical Steering Committee for the Linux Foundation OpenHPC project since 2016, and on the Governing Board for OpenHPC since 2019.