Digital Certificate Location-Based Authorization Policy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing digital certificate systems lack efficient mechanisms to enforce location-based authorization policies, leading to unauthorized access across geographic boundaries, which can compromise resource security and compliance with jurisdictional requirements.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating an authorization policy within the digital certificate that restricts access based on location, allowing administrators to define rules for credential usage, which are digitally signed and verified by a trusted authority, ensuring that access is granted only when the user and resource are within specified geographic or jurisdictional boundaries.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If digital certificates are used to authenticate users for accessing computing resources, then user authentication is enabled, but location-based authorization control is lacking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines authentication and authorization functions into a single digital certificate. The certificate includes both the user's authentication credential and authorization policies that define location-based access controls. This merging eliminates the need for separate authentication and authorization mechanisms, enabling both user verification and location-based policy enforcement through one integrated certificate structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The authorization policies are embedded within the digital certificate during its issuance by the certificate authority. This preliminary action ensures that location-based restrictions are pre-configured and automatically enforced when the certificate is presented for access, eliminating the need for separate policy configuration steps at the resource access point.
2Ease of operation
If access is allowed across geographic boundaries, then user accessibility is improved, but security and compliance with jurisdictional requirements deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic authorization by embedding location-based policies in the digital certificate that are evaluated at the time of access. The system dynamically determines whether to grant access based on the user's current location relative to the resource location, allowing flexible enforcement of jurisdictional requirements while maintaining user accessibility within authorized geographic boundaries.
3Reliability
If location-based restrictions are enforced in digital certificates, then security and compliance are improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges authentication credentials and authorization policies into a single digital certificate structure. By combining these functions that were traditionally separate into one integrated certificate, the system reduces overall system complexity despite adding location-based restrictions, as the merged structure is processed as a unified object rather than multiple separate components.
Data Source
AI summary
An administrator may issue a credential to a user and may define a policy that authorizes its use based on a predefined location. The policy and the credential may be bound in a digital certificate signed by a trusted party. When the user operates a computing device to access a resource, the computing device may present the digital certificate to the resource. In turn, the resource may use the digital certificate to authenticate the user and to verify that the policy authorizes his or her access.