Middle Tier Access Application for Secure Database Authentication
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Solution Overview
Problem
The increasing difficulty in securing sensitive data due to unauthorized access attempts by private and state actors, coupled with the need for businesses to protect trade secrets and customer information, highlights the inadequacy of existing data security measures in ensuring fine-grained access control and user authentication.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a middle-tier access application that uses identity assertion tokens, validated through a separate authentication utility, to authenticate and authorize users, ensuring only authorized users can access secured databases, with features like JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for secure information transfer and granular access policies.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional direct access architecture is used between end client and database, then system simplicity is maintained, but security and access control capability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an access application as a middle tier between the end client and the database. This intermediary component handles authentication, authorization, and security enforcement, allowing the system to achieve enhanced security without requiring fundamental changes to the core database architecture. The access application mediates all interactions, validating tokens and enforcing access policies before allowing database operations.
2Reliability
If fine-grained access control is implemented, then unauthorized access is prevented, but authentication and authorization overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs authentication and authorization actions in advance by issuing identity assertion tokens after initial user authentication. These tokens contain pre-validated authorization information that allows subsequent access requests to be processed quickly without repeating the full authentication sequence. The access application validates these pre-established tokens rather than performing complete authentication cycles for each request.
3Reliability
If identity assertion tokens are used for authentication, then user security is enhanced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The access application serves as an intermediary that manages the complexity of token-based authentication. It handles token issuance, validation, and revocation, shielding the database from direct exposure to complex authentication protocols. The database only needs to trust the access application's security decisions, simplifying its own security architecture while still benefiting from enhanced authentication mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
User security through a middle tier access application is enhanced using a token. In a method, a user authentication request to access a database is received from an end client. The user is authenticated. An identity assertion token is obtained after authenticating the user. The identity assertion token includes a personal identifier. A database request is received from the end client and the database request is sent to the database with the identity assertion token. A reply is received from the database in response to the database request if the personal identifier corresponds to a record stored at the database. The reply received from the database is sent to the end client.