Robert B. Bohn

Accelerating Scientific Discovery Through Computation and Visualization II

The rate of scientific discovery can be accelerated through computation and visualization. This acceleration results from the synergy of expertise, computing tools, and hardware for enabling high-performance computation, information science, and visualization that is provided by a team of computation and visualization scientists collaborating in a peer-to-peer effort with the research scientists. In the context of this discussion, high performance refers to capabilities beyond the current state of the art in desktop computing. To be effective in this arena, a team comprising a critical mass of talent, parallel computing techniques, visualization algorithms, advanced visualization hardware, and a recurring investment is required to stay beyond the desktop capabilities. This article describes, through examples, how the Scientific Applications and Visualization Group (SAVG) at NIST has utilized high performance parallel computing and visualization to accelerate condensate modeling, (2) fluid flow in porous materials and in other complex geometries, (3) flows in suspensions, (4) x-ray absorption, (5) dielectric breakdown modeling, and (6) dendritic growth in alloys.

An Overview of the NIST Cloud Computing Program and Reference Architecture

Cloud computing is the next step in the continued evolution of information systems. Cloud computing allows consumers to choose what service they want, how the services will be delivered, and provides usage based. The resource pooling and rapid provisioning of cloud services allow providers to more efficiently supply these resources. This results in the consumers’ needs being better met while at the same time using fewer resources (both physical assets and energy). To achieve these goals a better understanding of the implications of cloud computing along with interoperability, portability, and security standards is needed. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been tasked to help drive adoption of cloud computing by federal agencies through the identification and resolution of high-priority interoperability, portability and security issues.

Cloud Security Automation Framework

Cloud services have gained tremendous attentionas a utility paradigm and have been deployed extensively across awide range of fields. However, Cloud security is not catching upto the fast adoption of its services and remains one of the biggestchallenges for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Cloud ServiceConsumers (CSCs) from the industry, government, andacademia. These institutions are increasingly faced with threatssuch as DoS/DDoS attacks, ransomware attacks, and databreaches that are affecting the confidentiality, integrity, andavailability of the cloud system resources. In the current cloudsystems, security requires manual translation of securityrequirements into controls. Such an approach can be for themost part labor intensive, tedious, and error-prone leading toinevitable misconfigurations rendering the system-at-handvulnerable to misuse, either malicious or unintentional.Therefore, it is of utmost importance to automate theconfiguration of the cloud systems per the client’s securityrequirements steering clear from the caveats of the manualapproach. Furthermore, cloud systems need to be continuouslymonitored for any misconfigurations. This paper presents amethodology allowing for cloud security automation anddemonstrates how a cloud environment can be automaticallyconfigured to implement a set of NIST SP 800-53 securitycontrols. In addition, this paper shows how the implementationof these controls in the cloud systems can be continuouslymonitored and validated.