Federated Identity Ecosystem Analyzer for Cloud Security
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Solution Overview
Problem
In cloud computing environments, managing security and access across multiple web services is challenging due to disparate credentials and policies, making it difficult to evaluate security vulnerabilities and risk factors effectively.
Innovation Solution
An identity and credential ecosystem is established, utilizing a cloud-based identity ecosystem analyzer that tracks interplay between principals, credentials, and resources through a relationship network/graph, applying algorithms to evaluate risks, detect threats, and improve security by analyzing the identity graph.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple independent web services with disparate credentials and policies are used, then service functionality and versatility are improved, but security evaluation capability and risk detection capability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple independent web services into a unified federated identity system where services share common authentication and authorization capabilities through standard protocols (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect). This merging allows security evaluation to be performed centrally across the entire system rather than independently for each service, resolving the contradiction between service versatility and security detectability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces identity providers (IdP) and authentication brokers as intermediary components that mediate between users and multiple web services. These intermediaries standardize authentication flows and credential verification, enabling consistent security evaluation across diverse services without requiring each service to independently assess security risks.
2Ease of operation
If individual per-request authentication and authorization operations are performed by each service, then service independence and ease of operation are improved, but processing time and operational complexity worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary authentication and authorization operations through session tokens, cached credentials, and pre-established trust relationships between services. By performing authentication once and caching the results, the system avoids repeated per-request authentication while maintaining service independence, thus reducing processing time without sacrificing operational ease.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates universal authentication and authorization mechanisms that can be applied across multiple independent services. Through standardized protocols and shared identity stores, a single authentication operation serves multiple services simultaneously, reducing total processing time while maintaining the independence of each service to operate autonomously within the federated framework.
3Reliability
If comprehensive security analysis across multiple services is implemented, then security reliability is improved, but system complexity and computational resources worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments comprehensive security analysis into modular components distributed across the federated system. Each identity provider, authentication broker, and service implements specific security functions independently, with results aggregated through standardized interfaces. This segmentation maintains high security reliability through comprehensive coverage while reducing overall system complexity by avoiding centralized monolithic security analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
A processing device receives security data from a plurality of web services associated with an organization and stores the security data separately in an unstructured data storage. The processing device generates one or more purpose built databases from the security data in the unstructured data storage, the one or more purpose built databases merging the security data from the plurality of web services. The processing device further receives, from a requestor, an analysis request pertaining to the plurality of web services, executes an analysis using the one or more purpose built databases to generate a response to the analysis request, and provides the response to the analysis request to the requestor.