Authentication Artifact Signing for Outage-Resilient Access

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Solution Overview

Problem

Authentication systems face outages that prevent principals from maintaining access to resources after authentication artifact expiration, as backup systems lack the encryption key to modify and sign new artifacts.

Innovation Solution

Implement a backup authentication system that utilizes an authentication artifact signing service to modify and digitally sign authentication artifacts using the primary system's encryption key, ensuring seamless access during outages.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If a backup authentication system is implemented to maintain access during outages, then system reliability is improved, but security is worsened because the backup system must access the encryption key

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveauthentication continuityVSAvoidsecurity risk

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

An authentication artifact signing service is introduced as an intermediary component that the backup authentication system communicates with through API calls. This service holds the encryption key in a secure key store and performs the actual signing operations, allowing the backup system to generate valid authentication artifacts without directly accessing the encryption key, thus resolving the contradiction between reliability and security

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The authentication system is segmented into separate components: the backup authentication system that handles authentication logic, and the authentication artifact signing service that securely manages the encryption key. This segmentation allows the backup system to maintain reliability by having access to authentication capabilities while the security of the encryption key is preserved through dedicated secure storage and access controls in the signing service

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

2Ease of operation

If the encryption key is stored in the backup authentication system to enable artifact signing, then ease of operation is improved, but security is worsened due to key exposure

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveartifact modification capabilityVSAvoidkey exposure risk

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The authentication artifact signing service acts as an intermediary that the backup authentication system interacts with through standardized API calls. This allows the backup system to easily modify and sign authentication artifacts by requesting the signing service to perform these operations, while the encryption key remains securely stored in the signing service's key store and never exposed to the backup system, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and security

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

3Object-affected harmful factors

If the primary authentication system is used to sign authentication artifacts, then security is improved, but availability is worsened during system outages

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveauthentication validityVSAvoidsystem availability

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The authentication artifact signing service is configured with the primary authentication system's encryption key and acts as a mediator that can perform signing operations independently. During outages of the primary authentication system, the backup system can still request artifact signing through this intermediary service, which maintains the security guarantees of primary-signed artifacts while being available during outages, thus resolving the contradiction between security and availability

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The authentication artifact signing service is pre-configured with the primary authentication system's encryption key and signing capabilities before outages occur. This preliminary setup ensures that when the primary system is unavailable, the backup system can still obtain validly signed authentication artifacts through the pre-configured signing service, maintaining both security (through primary system's key) and availability (through independent signing service)

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS20260058828A1Secure authentication artifact storage and utilization for authentication systems

Publication Date: 2026.02.26 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

A system for authenticating a principal comprises first and second authentication systems and an authentication artifact signing service. The first authentication system issues a request comprising an authentication artifact associated with the principal and a specification of one or more modifications to be made thereto, the authentication artifact being generated by a second authentication system, signed thereby using a key, and stored by the first authentication system. The signing service receives the request and, responsive thereto: applies the modification(s) to the authentication artifact to generate a modified authentication artifact, signs the modified authentication artifact using a key of the second authentication system, and returns the signed modified authentication artifact to the first authentication system for use in authenticating the principal. The first authentication system executes in a different security domain than the signing service and is unable to access the key used thereby.