Hierarchical Document Encryption for Fine-Grained Access Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing mandatory access control systems fail to provide robust mechanisms to prevent subversion and ensure secure sharing of sensitive information across different organizations or departments with varying security clearances, leading to potential breaches.
Innovation Solution
A system that processes hierarchical documents by applying security labels to nodes based on tree-like structures, cryptographically segregates them into encrypted layers, and indexes them based on trust levels, allowing secure access and filtering results based on user clearance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If mandatory access control is implemented to restrict access to documents based on security clearance, then security is improved, but the system is vulnerable to subversion and lacks robust control mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments documents into hierarchical nodes with different security labels (e.g., top secret, secret, confidential, public). Each node can be independently accessed based on user clearance levels, allowing fine-grained control where users can access portions of documents appropriate to their clearance without needing access to the entire document. This segmentation prevents subversion by ensuring that even if a user compromises one node, they cannot access higher-security nodes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different security labels to different portions (nodes) of the same document based on their sensitivity. For example, a criminal investigation report may have general information labeled as confidential and specific evidence labeled as top secret. This local quality approach allows the system to provide robust control by treating each node according to its specific security requirements rather than applying a uniform security level to the entire document.
2Measurement precision
If security labels are applied to all nodes in hierarchical documents to enable fine-grained access control, then access control precision is improved, but processing time and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies security labels to nodes during the document ingestion process rather than in real-time during access requests. The system pre-processes hierarchical documents as they are uploaded, identifying nodes and assigning appropriate security labels based on the document type and content. This preliminary action stores the security labeling information in the document metadata, so that during access requests, the system can quickly retrieve pre-labeled nodes without performing complex analysis, thereby reducing processing time while maintaining high access control precision.
3Reliability
If documents are encrypted and segregated into multiple layers based on security clearance, then security is improved, but ease of access to information is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments encrypted documents into multiple layers corresponding to different security clearance levels. Each layer contains nodes with appropriate security labels and is encrypted with corresponding encryption keys. Users with specific clearance levels can access only their authorized layers, but the system automatically presents the information in a unified, user-friendly format. This segmentation maintains high security through encryption while preserving ease of access by abstracting the complexity from the user and handling layer management transparently.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary access control system that manages the complexity of multi-layer encrypted documents. This intermediary system handles key management, layer segregation, and access control logic, presenting a simplified interface to users. Users interact with a single unified document view rather than managing multiple encrypted layers themselves. The intermediary automatically applies the appropriate decryption keys and filters content based on user clearance, maintaining ease of operation while ensuring robust security through cryptographic segregation.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for generating a secured hierarchical document are described herein. A hierarchical document is obtained and is processed to generate a secured hierarchical document. A security label is applied to each node in the hierarchical document. The secured hierarchical document is generated by cryptographically segregating the nodes according to the security label of each node. The secured hierarchical document comprises a plurality of encrypted layers. Each encrypted layer comprises at least a subset nodes associated with a respective security label and encrypted with a respective encryption key. The secured hierarchical document is stored to computer-readable memory. Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for searching a corpus of secured hierarchical documents indexed in an index as sensitive information by a computing entity trusted to have access to the sensitive information in the index are also described herein.