Information security architecture for encrypting documents for remote access while maintaining access control

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT(S) Referring now to the Figures wherein like reference numerals indicate like elements, in FIG.
1, the system of the preferred embodiment can be broken down conceptually into three functional components: an authoring tool 102, a viewing tool 104, and a remote server 106.
For convenience, the embodiments described herein are described with respect to a document in Adobe Acrobat Exchange, but other embodiments using other base software packages are possible.
Other types of electronic information, as determined by the base software package chosen, can be encrypted using the present invention.
The authoring tool 102 allows an authoring user 108 to convert a text document 110 to unreadable form 112 using a strong encryption algorithm and an encryption key, or set of encryption keys, provided by the remote server 106.
The authoring tool 102 also registers the electronic document or information with the remote server 106 and associates a set of access policies with the encryption key so that only selected viewing users 116 under selected circumstances may view the document in clear text.
The document or information may also be broken down into segments using the authoring tool 102, so that certain segments within a document may have different access policies.
For example, a set of users may be allowed to view pages 1-5 of a 10 page document in clear text, while a subset of those users may be allowed to view all 10 pages of the document.
The authoring tool 102 also allows the authoring user 108 to block certain functions normally accessible by the viewing user 116.
For example, the authoring user 108 may deny a viewing user 116 privileges such as printing and copying of the clear text.
The viewing tool 104 allows a viewing user 116 to decrypt the document 112 an authoring user 108 has encrypted, provided the authoring user 108 has associated an access policy with the decryption key which grants access to the clear text to the viewing user 116.
The viewing tool 104 retrieves the decryption key 118 associated with the document segment 112 from the remote server 106, decrypts the document into clear text, renders the document segment, and destroys the decryption key and the clear text version of the document segment