The GASS (Global Access to Secondary Storage) is run on a per-user basis, either stand-alone (on a resource providing storage services) or as part of a job submission to propagate stdin/stdout. It also serves a purpose in prestaging executables to remote resources.
The GASS server uses secure http for authentication and data transfer, akin to the system used form GRAM job submission. However, regular connections to a GASS server using a web-browser will fail.