System and method for disaster recovery in an open metering system

A transaction evidencing system, comprising

• a host processor including storage means;
• vault means operatively coupled to said host processor, said vault means including digital token generation means and transaction accounting means;
• a printer operatively couple to said host processor;
• means in said host processor for issuing a request for at least one digital token, said request for digital token including predetermined information required by said token generation means;
• means in said host processor for securely communicating with said vault means, said communicating means sending said request for digital token to said vault means and receiving from said vault means a digital token generated by said token generation means;
• means in said host processor for capturing in said storage means a transaction record corresponding to said digital token, said transaction record including said digital token and said predetermined information;
• and
• means operatively coupled to said host processor for generating an indicia bitmap from said digital token.

A method for recovering vault data, the method comprising the steps of:

• retrieving cryptographically signed vault data from a data file in the host processor;
• verifying the signature of the cryptographically signed vault data;
• and
• recovering the vault data from the cryptographically signed vault data when the signature is verified.

A transaction evidencing system vault device, comprising:

• means for storing a predetermined set of vault data;
• means for cryptographically signing the predetermined set of vault data;
• and
• means for sending from the vault the cryptographically signed vault data.