Patent ID: 8868695

Claim:
A method for execution when a generic computing device is paired with a specific computing device token, the method comprises: establishing the pairing between the generic computing device and the specific computing device token by: detecting a coupling of the specific computing device token to the generic computing device; obtaining, by the generic computing device, user activation information; authenticating, by the specific computing device token, the user activation information; and when the user activation information is authenticated, establishing the pairing; sending, by the specific computing device token, a distributed storage network (DSN) access request to DSN memory via the generic computing device, wherein the DSN access request identifies specific computing device operation information that is stored as one or more of sets of encoded data slices in the DSN memory and wherein the specific computing device operation information was encoded using a dispersed storage error encoding function to produce the one or more of sets of encoded data slices; receiving, by the specific computing device token, the one or more of sets of encoded data slices from the DSN memory via the generic computing device; decoding, by the specific computing device token, the one or more of sets of encoded data slices to retrieve the specific computing device operation information; and enabling the generic computing device to function as a specific computing device in accordance with the specific computing device operation information.