Purpose-Limited Data Access With Signed Workload Tokens
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing digital platforms face challenges in enforcing data usage restrictions to specific purposes, especially with the proliferation of AI and machine learning, leading to difficulties in revoking access and updating data policies promptly, and maintaining data privacy.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that uses public key cryptography on purpose tokens, verifies workload images for security, and executes them in secure environments to ensure fine-grained access control and data confidentiality, leveraging virtual environments and special purpose hardware processors.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data access control is implemented with purpose limitation, then data privacy and security are improved, but system complexity increases due to multiple verification steps and tokens
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a purpose token as an intermediary mechanism between workload images and protected data. The purpose token contains a purpose label and digital signature, serving as a mediator that verifies both the workload image's identity and the data access purpose. This intermediary structure enables purpose limitation without requiring direct complex verification between all system components.
Solution Approach 2:
The access control system is segmented into distinct components: workload images containing executable snapshots, purpose tokens with digital signatures, and protected data with purpose labels. This segmentation allows each component to perform its specific function independently, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining security through the interaction of these modular elements.
2Reliability
If workload images are vetted and verified before data access, then security and trust are improved, but access time and productivity deteriorate due to verification overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary vetting and verification of workload images before they are allowed to access protected data. Workload images are verified against a database of registered images, and purpose tokens are pre-generated with digital signatures. This preliminary action ensures security is established before data access occurs, preventing security breaches while enabling efficient subsequent access.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the purpose token includes a digital signature that can be verified by the data repository. This feedback loop allows rapid verification of workload image authenticity and purpose validity without repeating the entire vetting process, thus maintaining both security and access speed through efficient verification feedback.
3Reliability
If purpose tokens with digital signatures are used for data access, then data confidentiality is improved, but computational resources and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses digital signatures that create cryptographic copies of the purpose label rather than transmitting the actual data or workload images. The purpose token contains a signed copy of the purpose information, allowing verification without moving large amounts of data. This copying approach maintains data confidentiality while reducing the computational and energy resources required for data transmission and processing.
Data Source
AI summary
This specification describes technologies for limiting usage of protected data to specified purposes. One method incudes loading a workload image encoding snapshot of a software application into a virtual environment for execution; providing a unique identifier of the workload image to a database system storing registered unique identifiers of workload images that have been sanitized; obtaining, from the database system, a purpose token signed by the purpose key associated with the purpose label; requesting a set of protected data from a data repository using the purpose token, wherein the purpose token is used to verify that the corresponding workload image with the matching registered unique identifier is permitted to access the set of protected data tagged with the one or more purpose labels; receiving, from the data repository, the set of protected data accessible by the software application when the executable snapshot is executed in the virtual environment.