Patent ID: 7330973

Claim:
A safety judgment method for judging safety of an information processing apparatus among the information processing apparatus, a first authentication apparatus and a second authentication apparatus which are connected through a communication network, comprising the steps of: receiving biological information by said information processing apparatus; authenticating the biological information by judging whether the received biological information is proper or not by said information processing apparatus, said first authentication apparatus, or said second authentication apparatus; collecting environment information including information about peripheral equipment connected to said information processing apparatus or about software installed in said information processing apparatus; transmitting the collected environment information from said information processing apparatus to said first authentication apparatus; transmitting an electronic certificate issued in advance by said second authentication apparatus and information encrypted with a secret key issued by said second authentication apparatus from said information processing apparatus to said first authentication apparatus; authenticating the electronic certificate by said first authentication apparatus by decrypting the encrypted information with a public key acquired from the transmitted electronic certificate by using a public key acquired from said second authentication apparatus, and judging whether or not the decrypted information is proper; authenticating the environment information by said first authentication apparatus by judging whether or not the transmitted environment information is proper with reference to an environment information database, which stores environment conditions classified according to information to be transmitted and received, and the transmitted information; and judging said information processing apparatus to be safe by said first authentication apparatus when all the authentications performed in the step of authenticating the biological information, the step of authenticating the environment information, and the step of authenticating an electronic certificate are successful.