Use of job tickets to secure resource access

Abstract

A job ticket service center includes features to provide security and to control access to a job ticket and related resources. The service center may include programming or servers to authenticate a processor and to authorize the processor to access a particular job ticket. An authentication server receives authentication information from a processor and an authorization server uses the information to check authorization functionality. The authorization or access rights of the processor may be carried as a part of the job ticket. Using these features, the service center may provide trusted authentication information about the processor to the authorization server, and the authorization server then performs its authority check functions. The job ticket maybe signed with an industry standard public key encryption message digest (MD) signature, and may be protected by a public key encryption system. Hence, any entity that has the public key may validate the job ticket without having to communicate with the authentication server. These features reduce communication between distributed server applications. The features also allow the job ticket to be passed from one processor to another processor, maintaining security, without communicating with the service center.