IGCA gets APgridPMA accreditation

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Indian Grid Certification Authority (IGCA), a certification authority for Grid, announced on Wednesday that it received accreditation from Asia Pacific Grid Policy Management Authority (APgridPMA) to provide access of worldwide grids to Indian researchers.

Indian researchers can now request user and host certificates to IGCA, part of Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and get access to worldwide grids, said a press release.

Indian researchers mainly constitute users of GARUDA Grid, Foreign collaborators or institutes related to Grid research and scientific collaborations from India that allows researcher to access the grid, it added.

"The Indian Grid Certification Authority has been started by C-DAC at the most appropriate time for researchers to collaborate among international Grids using the multi gigabits per second network connectivity offered by National Knowledge Network (NKN). I congratulate C-DAC and encourage them to take the task forward," said Dr. R Chidambaram, principal scientific adviser to Govt. of India.

According to Jainder Singh, secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of Communication and IT, "Trust and security for Grids is important as they share resources across different administrative domains... The operationalization of IGCA would pave the way for many applications which need sharing of resources at multiple locations in a trust-worthy manner."

Ramakrishnan, director general, CDAC "Just a few years back, C-DAC pioneered the Indian National Grid Initiative - GARUDA, and the endeavor in the last twelve months has been to move towards increasing the robustness, trust and practical applications. Setting up the Indian Grid Certification Authority (IGCA) represents an important milestone in this direction.”

He added that the IGCA would help scientists, users and collaborative community in India and neighboring countries to obtain an internationally recognized passport to inter operate with state-of-the-art grids worldwide, which otherwise is a complex and lengthy procedure.