Patent ID: 8689346

Claim:
An authentication method for authenticating a first party to a second party, each party being one of a device and a software application, where an operation is performed on condition that the authentication succeeds, comprising the steps of: providing at least one computer having a processor for performing the steps of: verifying whether the first party is authenticated or not by determining whether a compliance certificate of the first party is out of date or not, based on a comparison measure of the second party, wherein the comparison measure comprises a range of allowed validity numbers, and wherein the comparison measure compares a date of issuance measure of the compliance certificate with the comparison measure of the second party, wherein said first party is authenticated only if it is determined by the comparison that the date of issuance measure is not out of date; if the first party is determined to be not authenticated based on said verification, then conditionally qualifying the first party for a sub-authorization, dependent on a comparison of the date of issuance measure of the compliance certificate of the first party with the range of allowed validity numbers, wherein said conditional qualification of the first party for the sub-authorization is not allowed if it is determined that the date of issuance measure of the compliance certificate of the first party is lower than a minimum validity number of said range of allowed validity numbers indicating that the compliance certificate of the first party is revoked, and wherein said conditional qualification of the first party for the sub-authorization is allowed if it is determined that the date of issuance measure of the compliance certificate is higher than or equal to a maximum validity number of said range of allowed validity numbers; if the compliance certificate of the first party is determined not to be revoked, a pre-set value of a grace-counter is used for controlling a number of times that the first party is being sub-authorized, wherein, if the first party qualifies for the sub-authorization, the operation is still performed and the grace counter is decremented from an initialized predetermined number, and if the first party is authenticated, then setting the grace counter to the predetermined number.