Securing HPC: Development of a Low Cost, Open Source,
Multi-Factor Authentication Infrastructure
SessionSoftware for HPC Facilities
Event Type
Paper
Security
State of the Practice
TimeWednesday, November 15th2:30pm -
3pm
Location405-406-407
DescriptionMulti-factor authentication (MFA) is rapidly becoming
the de facto standard for access to all computing,
whether via web, phone, or direct command-line access.
HPC centers and other institutions supporting hundreds
or thousands of users face challenging cost, licensing,
user support, and infrastructure deployment decisions
when considering a transition to MFA at scale.
This paper describes our experiences and lessons learned throughout the assessment, planning, and phased deployment of MFA across production systems supporting more than 10,000 accounts. It focuses on the ultimate curation, creation, and integration of a multitude of software components, some developed in-house and built to be compatible within existing HPC environments, and all of which are freely available for open source distribution. We motivate the development of this customized infrastructure by highlighting some of the particular needs of our research community. What follows is an information resource for others when considering their own MFA deployments.
This paper describes our experiences and lessons learned throughout the assessment, planning, and phased deployment of MFA across production systems supporting more than 10,000 accounts. It focuses on the ultimate curation, creation, and integration of a multitude of software components, some developed in-house and built to be compatible within existing HPC environments, and all of which are freely available for open source distribution. We motivate the development of this customized infrastructure by highlighting some of the particular needs of our research community. What follows is an information resource for others when considering their own MFA deployments.
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