Long Running Jobs in an Authenticated Environment

Abstract

Current authentication systems require that a user have a valid token or ticket for a job to run. These tickets are issued with limited lifetimes, and their renewal requires a user to enter her password. We have developed a system called lat with which a user may schedule a batch job to be run at a later date in the current environment. The batch job is stored on a secure machine, and sent and received only in encrypted form. When it is time for the job to run, the server generates a ticket for the original user and sends it (encrypted) to the machine on which the job will run. The user is given an option to specify that tickets should be continually generated for the job until its execution has completed.