A digital certificate-based authentication system for multilevel security environment

In the current cloud environment, most systems employ single-factor authentication using a username and password, which are not suitable for applications with higher security requirements. In many fields such as schools, hospitals, etc., there is a demand for multiple levels of security due to their specificity. Identity authentication and security level authentication are the first steps to ensuring system security in multilevel environment. Some resolutions may require costly hardware or lead to low performance in efficiency. In this paper, we propose a digital certificate-based authentication system for multi-level security environment. Users and the authentication center can perform mutual authentication via digital signatures in untrusted network environments. Users with different security levels are isolated by root certificates, and hash algorithm is used to iteratively encrypt keys to improve authentication efficiency.