Patent ID: 7340610

Claim:
A method for providing trusted time stamping in a data storage system, the method comprising: determining data being stored in the data storage system; hashing the data to generate a hash value; sending the hash value and a request for a time stamp to a time stamping authority; receiving a time stamp token and a time stamping authority certificate from the time stamping authority, the time stamp token comprising a time stamp and the hash value; and storing the time stamp token and the time stamping authority certificate in the data storage system, the time stamp and hash value providing trusted time stamping for the determined data in the data storage system; wherein storing the time stamp token and the time stamping authority certificate comprises storing the time stamp and the hash value of the time stamp token and the time stamping authority certificate in metadata for the data storage system, the metadata including a reference to the stored data; the method further comprising validating the time stamp token stored in the metadata, the validating including: accessing the data stored in the data storage system using the reference to the data contained in the metadata; hashing the accessed data to generate a second hash value; retrieving from the metadata the hash value of the time stamp token; comparing the second hash value to the hash value found in the time stamp token which is stored in the metadata for the data storage system; and validating the time stamp token based on the comparison, wherein validating the time stamp token comprises contacting from the data storage system a party that can provide information needed to validate the time stamp certificate; wherein said storing the time stamp token and the time stamping authority certificate in the data storage system comprises: storing said time stamp token and said time stamp certificate and said metadata in a metadata table; storing said metadata table in a data storage device; and protecting said metadata table stored in said data storage device with a RAID architecture.