Method and system for determining confidence in a digital transaction

• US 20030101348A1
• Filed: 07/12/2002
• Published: 05/29/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 07/12/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Atrua Technologies Incorporated (Apple Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Atrua Technologies Incorporated (Apple Inc.)
• Inventors: Howell, Mark J., McCoy, Peter A., Russo, Anthony P.
• Application Number:
  US10/194,959
• Publication Number:
  US 20030101348A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/185
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/04 Payment circuits
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/4016 involving fraud or risk level assessment in transaction processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/1335 Combining adjacent partial images (e.g. slices) to create a composite input or reference pattern; Tracking a sweeping finger movement
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/08 Randomization, e.g. dummy operations or using noise
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/805 Lightweight hardware, e.g. radio-frequency identification [RFID] or sensor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3231 Biological data, e.g. fingerprint, voice or retina network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using biometrical features in a packet data network H04L63/0861

Abstract

The present invention provides systems and methods utilizing tokens to assign or mitigate risk. A software token is provided that associates a secret—such as a private key or password—with risk factors involved in protecting that secret from illicit access. The token may include an indication or calculation of the “overall risk of compromise” (OROC), generally represented as an overall trust metric, associated with the secret. This token can then be used to inform system operators or third parties of the confidence of a given system transaction that depends on the secret. A third party can then take whatever actions it deems appropriate according to the estimated risk. For example, in one embodiment of the present invention, the risk factor is used to deny a transaction if the risk is deemed to great—that is if the risk factor is greater than a predetermined (or sufficient) value.

Claims