EDUARDO MUNOZ
Physician Assistant in Seattle, WA

2004026, Dec 30, 2004

Jun 25, 2004

10/875606

Sharon Xia - Bellevue WA, US
Eduardo Munoz - Seattle WA, US
Dan Brombaugh - Seattle WA, US

WRQ, Inc. - Seattle WA

H04L009/00

713/201000

The technology herein can be used to dynamically deploy secure credentials including but not limited to digital certificates in a secure manner to provide higher levels of security and control than in some other previous arrangements. In one exemplary non-limiting illustrative arrangement, a management server acts as a repository for a plurality of user certificates corresponding to a plurality of users. When a user wishes to access a remote computer such as a secure-enabled host requiring a secure credential, her computer sends a request message to the management server. The management server may perform its own validity checking (e.g., based on password protection, directory information including user authorization, or a variety of other techniques). Once the management server is satisfied that the requesting user is authorized to access the secure host or other remote computer, the management server sends the user the necessary secure credential in a manner that is on demand (in other words, at the time the client certificate or key pair is needed to complete the connection to another server and not before); is secure during transmission; and is provided in a manner which prevents the client from using the client certificate or key pair to commence a new session to the SSL or SSH hosts after the User's session with server A has ended. In one example arrangement, the user's computer does not persistently store the secure credential but rather maintains the secure credential in volatile memory such as for example random access memory or other memory that will be reliable erased (e.g., by overwriting with other information).