Distributed Systems

In a distributed computing environment, nodes and processors operate independently, and storage and processing may be spread across multiple components.

Individual processing or storage nodes use a variety of messaging techniques to synchronize and coordinate sharing work and resources. Distributed systems take many forms, including nearly all forms of cloud architecture. Searching a data warehouse, for example, might be done by a distributed system running a copy of the same search query on each of many different processors, with each processor connected to a separate database. The coordinating processor would then receive the results from each individual query and assemble them into the format needed by the requesting user.

Distributed systems are often used by large organizations to spread processing and storage needs across multiple low-cost systems.

Other resource-sharing collective architectures, such as peer-to-peer sharing, are also forms of distributed systems.

Distributed systems may have high levels of redundancy, including geographic replication of data. More robust distributed systems can offer dynamic load balancing, which also provides somewhat graceful degradation of performance if processors or storage subsystems fail.

Vulnerabilities

Distributed systems have a few possible vulnerabilities. Simpler distributed systems may lack sufficient monitoring and control capabilities to detect failures or security compromises in a timely manner. They may also lack sufficient access control capabilities to support multiple levels of information security classification and categorization.

Mitigations

It may be prudent to implement better access control, systems health and status monitoring, and intrusion detection systems if the in-place hardware, software, and interconnections infrastructure can support it. If the existing systems cannot support those additional capabilities, then physical, logical, and administrative isolation of the distributed system may be appropriate.