Voting-Based Certificate Recovery for Admin Access Reinstatement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing certificate-based authentication systems in identity and access management fail to ensure long-term security, as administrators may forget to renew their certificates, leading to access denial when they expire, which disrupts operations in multi-tenant environments.
Innovation Solution
A voting engine is employed to reinstate administrator access by generating and installing a new certificate, requiring tenant administrators to verify the identity of the administrator through a voting process via a REST API, ensuring secure and efficient recovery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If certificate-based authentication is used to enhance security, then security is improved, but access recovery becomes difficult when certificates expire
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a voting engine as an intermediary component that mediates between tenant administrators and the access services administrator. When certificate-based authentication fails due to expiration, the voting engine enables a collaborative recovery process where multiple tenant administrators can collectively restore administrator access without requiring password-based authentication, thus maintaining security while enabling access recovery
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service access recovery by allowing tenant administrators to independently restore an access services administrator's certificate through a voting process. The administrator can self-restore access by providing identifying information and obtaining votes from tenant administrators, eliminating the need for external intervention or password-based fallback mechanisms
2Ease of operation
If basic username/password authentication is used for simplicity, then ease of operation is improved, but long-term security deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the password-based authentication mechanism from the system, removing it entirely in favor of certificate-based authentication for all access scenarios. The voting engine provides an alternative recovery path that does not rely on password-based authentication, thus eliminating security vulnerabilities associated with password storage and management while maintaining operational simplicity through the voting process
3Reliability
If certificate expiration is enforced for security, then security is improved, but service continuity deteriorates when certificates are not renewed
Solution Approach 1:
The voting engine serves as a pre-established safety mechanism that cushions against the disruptive effects of certificate expiration. By having the recovery process configured in advance through the voting mechanism, the system can smoothly transition from certificate-based authentication failure to recovered access without service interruption, maintaining both security enforcement and service continuity
Data Source
AI summary
Reinstating access to a system of an admin whose certificate is invalid or expired is disclosed. When the admin's certificate is expired, the admin may send a request for reinstatement to tenant admins. One of the tenant admins, if satisfied as to the admin's identity, can invoke a voting operation that allows the tenant admins to vote on whether to reinstate the admin. If the vote is successful, one of the tenant admins is given temporary privileges or permissions to install the admin's new certificate, after which the admin is reinstated and has access to the system.