Job-Level Credential Enforcement for Multi-Tenant Data Isolation

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Solution Overview

Problem

Multi-tenant systems face challenges in enforcing tenant-level data isolation when executing jobs on secondary platforms like cloud services, which can lead to accidental or malicious cross-tenant data access, resulting in data corruption or loss.

Innovation Solution

Implementing job-level credentials, such as security tokens, to control access to tenant data on secondary platforms, ensuring that jobs only access and modify relevant data by annotating job configurations with these credentials before execution.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Productivity

If jobs are executed on a secondary platform without tenant-level data isolation, then resource utilization and productivity are improved, but data security and tenant isolation are compromised

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvejob execution efficiencyVSAvoiddata isolation guarantee

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces an intermediary credential validation mechanism between the job execution module and the data store. This intermediary enforces tenant-level data isolation by validating job credentials against tenant identifiers before allowing data access, thus maintaining security while enabling efficient job execution on the secondary platform

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If tenant-level data isolation is enforced through multiple separate storage locations, then data security is improved, but system complexity and storage overhead increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata isolation guaranteeVSAvoidstorage management complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments data access permissions by tenant identifier rather than creating physically separate storage locations for each tenant. The credential validation mechanism divides data access into tenant-specific permissions, allowing multiple tenants to share the same data store while maintaining logical isolation through credential-based access control

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent creates a universal credential validation mechanism that serves multiple tenants and jobs simultaneously. The same validation logic and data store structure are reused across all tenant jobs, eliminating the need for separate storage infrastructure for each tenant while maintaining data isolation

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Data Source

PatentUS11880484B2Enforcing data isolation in jobs executed by a multi-tenant system on a secondary platform

Publication Date: 2024.01.23 SALESFORCE INC

AI summary

A multi-tenant system sends jobs for execution on a secondary platform such as a cloud based platform. The multi-tenant system sends tenant data for multiple tenants to the secondary platform. The multi-tenant system obtains job-level credentials from the secondary platform, for example, security tokens that provide access to tenant data for a fixed length of time. The multi-tenant system uses the job-level credentials for enforcing tenant level data isolation for jobs executed on the secondary platform. This ensures that the jobs executing on the secondary platform do not access, modify, or delete data of tenants not related to the job.