Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Pranav Kukreja

Nathan Jeffrey Ide

Ibrahim Mohammad Ismail

Paul J Leach

Mark Fishel Novak

Peter Gregory Davis

Arun K Nanda

Anshul Rawat

Jing Zhang

Vishal Agarwal

Nir Ben Zvi

Craig Thomas McIntyre

Guillermo Enrique Rueda

David McPherson

Ramaswamy Ranganathan

Jonathan D Schwartz

Saurav Sinha

Sunil P Gottumukkala

Jignesh Shah

Tony Ureche

Yashar Bahman

Andrey Popov

Ming Tang

Aspects of the present disclosure include systems and methods for generating and managing user authentication rules of a computing device. In an example, a computing device may include a memory storing instructions and a processor communicatively coupled with the memory and configured to execute the instructions. The processor may determine a state of the computing device, wherein the state of the computing device is one of a locked state or an unlocked state. The processor may determine a user authentication rule corresponding to the state of the computing device. The processor may also identify whether a combination of signals associated with the user authentication rule of the computing device are received by the computing device. The processor may also change or maintain the state of the computing device based on the combination of signals being received.

Authentication rules for locked and unlocked states

Systems and methods for generating and managing user authentication rules of a computing device

In one embodiment, a user device may reestablish access to a user resource while forgoing use of a user credential during a system reboot. The user device may receive the user credential from a user during an initial login to access the user resource. The user device may create an ephemeral entropy to access the user resource. The user device may access the user resource using the ephemeral entropy.

Resumption of logon across reboots

Resource authorization policies and resource scopes may be defined separately, thereby decoupling a set of authorization rules from the scope of resources to which those rules apply. In one example, a resource includes anything that can be used in a computing environment (e.g., a file, a device, etc.). A scope describes a set of resources (e.g., all files in folder X, all files labeled 'Y', etc.). Policies describe what can be done with a resource (e.g., 'read-only,' &#x201c;read/write,&#x201d; &#x201c;delete, if requestor is a member of the admin group,&#x201d; etc.). When scopes and policies have been defined, they may be linked, thereby indicating that the policy applies to any resource within the scope. When a request for the resource is made, the request is evaluated against all policies associated with scopes that contain the resource. If the conditions specified in the policies apply, then the request may be granted.

Scoped resource authorization policies

A policy that governs access to a resource may be tested against real-world access requests before being used to control access to the resource. In one example, access to a resource is governed by a policy, referred to as an effective policy. When the policy is to be modified or replaced, the modification or replacement may become a test policy. When a request is made to access the resource, the request may be evaluated under both the effective policy and the test policy. Whether access is granted is determined under the effective policy, but the decision that would be made under the test policy is noted, and may be logged. If the test policy is determined to behave acceptably when confronted with real-world access requests, then the current effective policy may be replaced with the test policy.

Testing access policies

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Pranav Kukreja