In this paper we present the design of a scalable and secure cryptographic service that can be adopted to support large-scale
networked systems, which may require strong authentication from a large population of users. Since the users may not be able
to adequately protect their cryptographic credentials, our service leverages some better protected servers to help fulfill
such authentication needs. Compared with previous proposals, our service has the following features: (1) it incorporates a
3-factor authentication mechanism, which facilitates compromise detection; (2) it supports immediate revocation of a cryptographic
functionality in question; (3) the damage due to the compromise of a server is contained; (4) it is scalable and highly available.
Keywords cryptographic service - scalability - security - compromise detection - compromise confinement - availability