Gateway Mediator for Anonymous BOT Communication
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Solution Overview
Problem
Company computer networks face challenges in maintaining security and managing the use of public instant messaging (IM) robots (BOTs), as they often store user addresses, leading to unwanted chat sessions and increased load on collaboration servers due to separate subscriptions for each employee accessing public information resources.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that includes a gateway-to-BOT communications manager to relay communications anonymously, preventing the BOT from associating with the user, and a gateway-to-user communications manager to relay BOT communications, allowing users to subscribe to presence information without direct identification and managing subscriptions centrally.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If employees access public information resources through BOTs by providing their network addresses, then information access capability is improved, but security risk increases due to unwanted chat sessions initiated by BOTs storing user addresses
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gateway as an intermediary component between the private network and public BOTs. The gateway relays communications between employees and BOTs without exposing actual user network addresses to the BOTs, thereby maintaining security while enabling information access. The gateway acts as a mediator that forwards messages while protecting user identity information.
2Measurement precision
If a centralized collaboration server maintains separate subscriptions for each employee accessing the same BOT, then individual user presence information is tracked accurately, but server load increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual user subscriptions into a single shared subscription at the gateway level. Instead of each employee having a separate subscription to the same BOT, the gateway maintains one subscription that serves all employees accessing that BOT. This consolidates the server load while still enabling individual presence information tracking through the gateway's internal management.
3Ease of operation
If public BOTs store user network addresses for communication, then chat session initiation is enabled, but unwanted communications and privacy violations occur
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway serves as an intermediary that prevents BOTs from obtaining actual user network addresses. When the BOT needs to initiate a chat session, the gateway translates the BOT's address request into an internal routing mechanism that doesn't expose user identities. This maintains chat functionality while blocking the harmful effect of address storage and unwanted communications.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for managing the use of BOTs by computer network users, the system including a gateway-to-BOT communications manager configured to relay communications to a BOT on behalf of a computer user in a manner that prevents the BOT from associating the communications with the computer user, and a gateway-to-user communications manager configured to relay the communications from the computer user to the gateway-to-BOT communications manager, and relay to the computer user communications received from the gateway-to-BOT communications manager that originate from the BOT.