The use of computer systems and computer-related technologies continues to increase at a rapid pace. This increased use of computer systems has influenced the advances made to computer-related technologies. Indeed, computer systems have increasingly become an integral part of the business world and the activities of individual consumers. Computer systems may be used to carry out several business, industry, and academic endeavors.
Computer systems may function as information management systems. For example, a server may provide information about files or other data to client computer systems. A client may send a request to a server querying whether a particular file is malicious or non-malicious. In addition, the client may request information from the server regarding a particular website. The back-end (i.e., server) may perform an analysis of the files, websites, data, etc., in order to provide a response to the client.
Malicious users of computer systems may desire to query a back-end server to gather information about a particular file. The back-end server may prevent a malicious-motivated query by authenticating the various requests that are received. Currently, client authentication schemes (such as cryptographic key and token schemes) may be implemented to authenticate a request received from a client. Authenticating a high level of requests, however, may cause the performance of the server to decrease. Current authentication schemes may require computational effort on the server to validate a request. Responses to legitimate requests may be delayed if the load on the server from validating millions of requests is too high. As a result, benefits may be realized by providing system and methods for selectively authenticating queries based on an authentication policy.