This white paper discusses the current state of Privileged Access Management (PAM) and its application to High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. In it, we draw a parallel between HPC and Hadoop since the latter has attracted a lot of attention from PAM vendors, much of which can be applied to HPC either in its more classic on-premises configuration or in evolving hybrid on-premises/cloud configurations.
HPC has been with us for decades. From its roots in supercomputing where it was available only to a select few with deep pockets, it has evolved to capitalize on commodity hardware, making it available to just about any organization cost-effectively.
More recently, we’ve seen tremendous growth in cloud-based technologies. One such technology is Hadoop, which has attracted many big names such as Facebook, Alibaba, eBay, and Amazon. Whether in public or private clouds, PAM has played a major role in helping secure Big Data projects that rely on these Hadoop concepts.
This adoption, however, doesn’t mean that classic data center hosted HPC environments have simply shut down and migrated wholesale to the cloud. Thousands still exist globally in government, industry and academia. Many of these continue to grow, serving the needs of disciplines such as bioscience, physics, and climate.
This paper discusses these PAM-related risks and how you can leverage Identity-Centric PAM to address them.