Technologies for token-based authentication and authorization of distributed computing resources

#This patent application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119 to U.S. Nonprovisional patent application Ser. No. 15/162,936, filed on May 24, 2016, the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference.

#Embodiments of the technologies described herein relate, in general, to the field of authentication and authorization of computing devices and resources thereof. More particularly, the technologies relate to the field of using signed custom tokens as a root credential for authenticating and authorizing distributed computing devices and resources.

#Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) develop applications and systems configured, to perform payment processing operations and/or provide other functionality in connection with services and data provided by an acquirer processor. One or more Application Program Interfaces (APIs) can be exposed by the acquirer processor to facilitate interactions between applications and systems developed by an ISV and devices and resources of the acquirer processor.

#It is believed that certain embodiments will be better understood from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements and in which:

#FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram of at least one embodiment of a system for provisioning and using a signed custom token for authenticating distributed computing resources and authorizing access to a resource server.

#FIG. 2 is simplified flow diagram of at least one embodiment of a method that may be executed by the access management server of FIG. 1 for generating and provisioning a signed custom token;

#Various non-limiting embodiments of the present disclosure will now be described to proved an overall understanding of the principles of the structure, function, and use of systems and methods disclosed herein. One or more examples of these non-limiting embodiments are illustrated in the selected examples disclosed and described in detail with reference made to the figures in the accompanying drawings. Those of ordinary skill in the art will understand that systems and methods specifically described herein and illustrated in the accompanying drawings are non-limiting embodiments. The features illustrated or described in connection with one non-limiting embodiment can be combined with the features of other non-limiting embodiments. Such modifications and variations are intended to be included within the scope of the present invention.

#Referring now to FIG. 1, in one embodiment, a system 100 for provisioning and using a signed custom token for authentication and authorization of distributed computing resources includes an access management server 110 in communication with a remote computing device 130 and a resource server 140 via one or more communication network(s). It should be appreciated that although the system 100 includes a single remote computing device 130 and a single resource server 140 in the illustrative embodiment, the system 100 can include any number of remote computing devices 130 and resource servers 140, in other embodiments.

#The remote computing device 130 can be embodied as a computing device, platform, or service (e.g., “a requesting entity”) of an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) configured to interact with data or a service provided by the resource server 140. In some embodiments the resource server 140 can be associated with an acquirer processor (or another type of entity), which can be configured to process payment vehicle transactions for merchants. In such embodiments, the ISV can facilitate interactions with the resource server 140 of the acquirer processor. For example, in some embodiments, the remote computing device 130 can include an ISV application 132 configured to perform payment processing operations and/or provide other functionality in connection with services and/or data provided by the resource server 140 of the acquirer processor. In operation, the ISV application 132 is configured to interact with the services and/or data provided by the resource server 140 via one or more exposed Application Program Interfaces (APIs). For example, in some embodiments, the ISV application 132 is configured to initiate one or more calls to the APIs exposed by the resource server 140. Prior to being granted access to the resource server 140, or the services and/or data provided by the resource server 140, the ISV application 132 can be required to be authenticated and authorized by the access management server 110, the resource server 140, or another computing device of the system 100.