Patent ID: 7716488

Claim:
A method for providing trusted time stamping for commands for a data storage system, the method comprising: determining a command executed in the data storage system; hashing information for the command 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, the time stamp and hash value providing trusted time stamping mechanism for the command; storing the time stamp token command and the command in a command log in the data storage system; and validating the time stamp token stored in the data storage system, including: accessing the information for the command; hashing the accessed information to generate a second hash value; retrieving the hash value of the time stamp token by utilizing information associated with the time stamping authority certificate; comparing the second hash value to the hash value found in the time stamp token which is stored in the data storage system; and validating the time stamp token based on the comparison; wherein determining a command includes determining whether the command should be time stamped based on a predetermined rule; and wherein the predetermined rule is to which logical volume of the data storage system the command is directed.