Cloud bursting galaxy: federated identity and access management

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology
• Data Security

Background:

• Large biomedical datasets (genomics, imaging) are moving to cloud platforms for scalable resources.
• Secure access to distributed biomedical data across cloud platforms is a significant challenge.
• Existing web protocols for authentication and authorization are underutilized and difficult to implement in bioinformatics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a generic and extensible method for secure access to distributed biomedical datasets on cloud platforms.
• To integrate best-practice web security protocols with a widely used scientific computational workbench.
• To enable researchers to access and analyze multi-cloud biomedical data without specialized security knowledge.

Main Methods:

• Combined OpenID Connect and OAuth2 (web protocols for authentication and authorization) with the Galaxy computational workbench.
• Developed an enhanced version of Galaxy for seamless data access across multiple cloud providers.
• Implemented a system relying on temporary, auto-refreshing tokens instead of permanent user credentials.

Main Results:

• Users can access and analyze distributed biomedical datasets across multiple cloud platforms through an enhanced Galaxy interface.
• The system eliminates the need for users to share permanent credentials, enhancing security.
• This approach is generalizable to various identity providers and cloud platforms, minimizing unauthorized data access risks.

Conclusions:

• The enhanced Galaxy workbench provides a unique solution for secure, multi-cloud biomedical data access.
• This method simplifies secure data handling for researchers, regardless of technical expertise.
• The system promotes wider adoption of robust web security practices in bioinformatics research.