Cloud Security Alliance Issues Guide to Utilizing High Performance Computing

Report provides a starting point for the proper selection, design, and implementation of an HPC solution

SEATTLE – May 17, 2022 – The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today released the High Performance Computing (HPC) Cloud Services Onboarding Guide. Drafted by the HPC Cloud Security Working Group, this paper presents an overview of what users should consider to ensure the proper selection, design, and implementation of an HPC solution that will satisfy their business, security, and compliance objectives.

In a 2015 Executive Order, the term "high-performance computing" was used to refer to systems that, through a combination of processing capability and storage capacity, can solve computational problems that are beyond the capability of small- to medium-scale systems. Today, the United States, EU, and other global powers see HPC as crucial to solving problems such as climate change, renewable energy, evolution, the origin of the universe, prevention and treatment of epidemics and diseases, among many others.

“Despite its myriad uses, current access to HPC resources has been the exclusive privilege of a small group of IT users, thanks in part to the significant investment in capital assets and operations that is required,” said Guan-Sin Ong, one of the paper’s lead authors and co-chair of the HPC Working Group. “It’s imperative, therefore, that users have specialized knowledge and expertise in order to properly implement and harness HPC’s enormous computational resources.”

“The emergence of HPC cloud services by commercial cloud service providers has democratized access, allowing a larger group of users to harness their vast computational resources without making hefty upfront investments or employing specialized operation staff. However, HPC users must first gain competence in understanding the problems and the type of workloads that can benefit from its use,” said Andrew Howard, one of the paper’s lead authors and co-chair of the HPC Working Group.

Among the topics covered in the guide are cloud architecture, workload management, performance, benchmarks, security and risk management, and cost/benefit analysis.

This report is the first in a series, the second of which will focus on the security considerations of using an HPC cloud service. With commercial HPC cloud services maturing, lessons and best practices will become available leading to an increase in such usage. This next report will be useful to both new and experienced, on-premises HPC users.

The High Performance Computing (HPC) Cloud Security Working Group strives to provide recommendations that can answer the questions of how security in an HPC cloud environment can be implemented, enforced, and ensured without compromising performance. Individuals interested in becoming involved in future research and initiatives are invited to join the working group.

Download the full guide now.

About Cloud Security Alliance
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, training, certification, events, and products. CSA's activities, knowledge, and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by the cloud — from providers and customers to governments, entrepreneurs, and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which different parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For further information, visit us at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.