Patent ID: 8352731

Claim:
A secure decentralized storage system, said system comprising: one or more application clients connected to the network; a plurality of storage devices; a security manager and a metadata server, wherein the application clients, the security manager and the metadata server communicate with the storage devices via the iSCSI protocol; wherein the application clients communicate with the security manager and the metadata server via the TCP/IP protocol; wherein said storage devices are object-based storage devices or network-attached storage devices and provide storage service to users with a standard object interface or file interface; and wherein said metadata server manages a plurality of storage devices, balances the load among the storage devices and maps the user's data to multiple storage devices; and said system has the following characters: said application clients, said storage devices, said security manager, said metadata server and said users are the members of said system; and each member has at least one digital identity certificate; said storage devices and data stored in the storage devices have their corresponding access control entries; said security manager stores and manages global access control entries and policies of said system, and performing the access policy and privilege control according to the global access control entries and policies, including changing the priority and inheritance rule of access control entries, adding, modifying and revoking access control entries at said storage devices; wherein said digital identity certificate includes the member identifier, role identifier that the member belongs to and expiration time of the certificate; said digital identity certificate is the authority certificate issued by a certificate authority (CA) based on public key infrastructure (PKI) or the identity certificate issued by a trusted authority (TA) based on identity-based encryption (IBE); wherein said access control entries define the member's or role's access privilege to said storage devices and data stored at the storage devices; said access control entries include the member access control entry and role access control entry for the member's and role's access controls respectively; said member access control entry has higher priority than said role access control entry; the members having access privileges grant, revoke and update the access privileges by adding, deleting and modifying access control entries.