MediGRID: Towards a user friendly secured grid infrastructure

Many scenarios in medical research are predestined for grid computing. Large amounts of data in complex medical image, biosignal and genome processing demand large computing power and data storage. Integration of distributed, heterogeneous data, e.g. correlation between phenotype and genotype data are playing an essential part in life sciences. Sharing of specialized software, data and processing results for collaborative work are further tasks which would strongly benefit from the use of grid infrastructures. However, two major barriers are identified in existing grid environments that prevent extensive use within the life sciences community: Extended security requirements and appropriate usability. To meet these requirements, the MediGRID project is enhancing the basic D-Grid infrastructure along with the implementation of prototype applications from different fields of biomedical research. In this paper, we focus on the developments for ease-of-use under consideration of different aspects of security. They encompass not only security within the grid infrastructure, but also the boundary conditions of network security on the site of the research institutions. For medical grids, we propose a strictly web-portal-based access to grid resources for end-users, with user-guiding, application specific, graphical interfaces. Different levels of authorization are implemented, from fully authorized users to guests without certificate authentication in order to allow hands-on experience for potential grid users.