Computational grids, particularly those that operate outside a controlled enterprise environment, make attractive black hat targets, not only for the power they wield, but also for the sheer expanse of their potential vulnerabilities. Even the providers of power and the users thereof must be presumed untrustworthy. This talk identifies many of the security threats to which public computational grids are exposed and discusses the approaches that are being used in practice for addressing such.

Dr. Steven L. Armentrout is founder and CEO of Parabon® Computation, Inc., the first commercial grid computing company, whose software platform, Frontier®, powers the Global Grid Exchange.™ A recognized technology expert and a successful entrepreneur, he founded two successful firms prior to Parabon, both of which developed analytical software for the investment industry. Constantly starved for computational power to drive his inNoVA/DC /DC /DC /DC tive computer models, Dr. Armentrout helped found the industry of grid computing wherein the idle processing power of potentially millions of Internet-connected computers is delivered to the desktops of those who need it.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Armentrout developed object-based image processing algorithms for the federal government at the BDM Corporation, and developed imagery archival software while working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dr. Armentrout holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, where his groundbreaking creation of the world's smallest known self-replicating cellular automata was featured in Science magazine. While focused primarily on the private sector, his academic work has been published in Neural Computation and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and, most recently, Clinical Cancer Research.