A novel security schema for distributed file systems

Abstract

Distributed file systems are key tools that enable collaboration in any environment consisting of more than one computer. Security is a term that covers several concepts related to protecting data. Authentication refers to identifying the parties involved in using or providing file services. Authorization is the process of controlling actions in the system both at the user level, such as read and write, and at the administrative level, such as setting quotas and moving data between servers. Communication security addresses the integrity and privacy of messages exchanged over networks vulnerable to attack. Storage security concerns the safety of data "at rest" on disks or other devices. But these are mechanistic approaches to security. At a higher level, the issue of trust of all the parties in each other and the system components control the security decisions. This project is a successful endeavor to make security in distributed file systems. The main object of the paper was to get in depth knowledge about base concepts of distributed file system like fault tolerance, fault recovery, scalability and specifically security. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.