Authentication of entitlement certificates

An administration apparatus to:

• receive an authorisation request from a device;
• collate the authorisation request with multiple other such requests from respective other devices to form a set of authorisation requests;
• and
• transmit the set of authorisation requests to a trusted signing authority apparatus.

A machine-readable storage medium encoded with instructions for providing a set of certificates encoding authorisations, the instructions executable by a processor of a trusted signing authority apparatus to cause the apparatus to:

• process respective ones of multiple authorisation requests to verify respective digital signatures applied to the requests, the multiple authorisation requests received over a first communication link between the trusted signing authority apparatus and an administration apparatus;
• validate one or more authorisation request parameters of respective ones of the authorisation requests,
• generate a certificate encoding an authorisation;
• and
• transmit the generated certificate to the administration apparatus or a requesting apparatus over a second communication link.