Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for authenticating users accessing computing applications, e.g., applications hosted in a cloud environment accessed using a variety of computing systems. As disclosed, an authentication process is performed using a certificate and private key installed on a mobile device and a nonce generated on the server. To authenticate a user, a server generates a nonce, encrypts the nonce with a public key associated with the user, and encodes the encrypted nonce in a barcode graphic (e.g., a QR code). The resulting barcode graphic is displayed to the user, and a mobile device scans the barcode graphic to recover the encrypted nonce. The encrypted nonce is decrypted using a private key stored on the mobile device. The clear text nonce is then displayed on the screen of the mobile device and used as a one-time password (OTP) for authentication.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for authenticating users to a computing application. A mobile or tablet device is used to generate a security code. Near field communication (NFC) hardware on the mobile device is used to transfer the security code from the mobile device to a computer. To transfer the one-time value, a user simply taps an NFC enabled mobile device on an NFC enabled computing device (e.g. a laptop running a web browser used to access a web service). In one embodiment, doing so triggers a connection between the two devices and an application running on the mobile device transfers the security code to an NFC receiver application running on the computer. The receiving computer may be configured to auto-fill the received security code in the appropriate form field of the application authentication interface.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for restoring a system volume on a computing system without requiring the system volume to be fully restored prior to being used or requiring the use of a dedicated recovery environment (e.g., the WinPE or BartPE environments). Instead, the computing system is booted directly from the restore image or by redirecting I/O interrupts to the restore image. That is, when user initiates a restore process, the system boots from the backup itself. Once booted, a background process can complete the restore process.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for restoring a system volume on a computing system without requiring the system volume to be fully restored prior to being used or requiring the use of a dedicated recovery environment (e.g., the WinPE or BartPE environments). Instead, the computing system is booted directly from the restore image or by redirecting I/O interrupts to the restore image. That is, when user initiates a restore process, the system boots from the backup itself. Once booted, a background process can complete the restore process.