Applicability analysis of grid security mechanisms on cloud networking

Grid computing has been around for quite a while. It facilitates utilization of distributed resources and has been extremely popular in its implementation. Grids have evolved enough to secure their operational architecture. On the other hand, cloud computing offers more recent alternative in distributed virtualization of resources, providing an on-demand architecture with a simple model for service charges. However, cloud computing is still struggling with different approaches to secure its operations. This paper discusses the security mechanisms in grid and cloud computing, and based on the current implementations in grid security, proposes a simple architecture for secured access control and policy enforcement system for cloud networks.