Addressing security aspects for HPC infrastructure

Today High-Performance Computing (HPC) market is finding an increasing rate of adoption of the technology in a number of industries and verticals. With the increased adoption of the HPC technology, there is also rise in the concerns with the security aspects of this technology. Many of the system engineers and technologists that worked closely with the HPC technology believes HPC security posture is in parity with traditional computer infrastructure security. The goal of this paper is to share the learning of common security gaps and also to increase awareness in the market on how best to alleviate the security concerns for the HPC deployments. After analyzing many of the HPC deployments, at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) in India, CDAC team has identified many common security loopholes and corresponding solutions for better security environment without fundamentally changing how they have deployed and way of using the HPC infrastructure.