Patent ID: 7475259

Claim:
A system for controlling access to digital services comprising: (a) a control center configured to coordinate and provide digital services; (b) an uplink center configured to receive the digital services from the control center and transmit the digital services to a satellite; (c) the satellite configured to: (i) receive the digital services from the uplink center; (ii) process the digital services; and (iii) transmit the digital services to a subscriber receiver station; (d) the subscriber receiver station configured to: (i) receive the digital services from the satellite; (ii) control access to the digital services through an integrated receiver/decoder (IRD); (e) a conditional access module (CAM) communicatively coupled to the (IRD), wherein the CAM comprises: (i) a system bus; (ii) a plurality of physically separate and independently controlled nonvolatile memory components, wherein access control to the digital services is distributed among the nonvolatile memory components wherein separate and independent attacks must be conducted on each nonvolatile memory component to gain unauthorized access to the digital services; and (iii) a microprocessor communicatively coupled to the nonvolatile memory components, wherein the microprocessor is configured to use state information in the nonvolatile memory components to provide desired functionality and enforce one or more security policies for accessing the digital services, and wherein the microprocessor controls each of the plurality of nonvolatile memory components and each nonvolatile memory component has separate memory access and control restrictions.