Screen Capture Sensitive Data Erasure via Embedded Protection Markers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Organizations face data leakage risks due to sensitive information being inadvertently or maliciously captured from screen displays, despite policies allowing viewing but not capturing or photographing, as existing solutions either block display or fail to protect against capture.
Innovation Solution
Defining and embedding protection regions within bitmaps with markers that identify sensitive information, allowing for detection and erasure upon capture, using visible or invisible markers to protect against screen captures and photographs, and dividing regions into sub-regions to maintain accuracy despite overlapping or clipping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If sensitive information is displayed on screen for authorized viewing, then usability and job performance are improved, but data leakage risk increases due to screen capture and photography
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by embedding protection markers into the display output before it can be captured. These markers are inserted into the graphics buffer or display stream in advance, so that when screen capture or photography occurs, the markers are already present and can be used to identify and redact sensitive information regions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces protection markers as an intermediary element between the sensitive information and the capture process. These markers act as mediators that enable the detection and identification of sensitive regions in captured content, allowing the system to bridge the need for display and the need for protection without directly blocking the display.
2Reliability
If screen capture is blocked outright to prevent data leakage, then data security is improved, but authorized viewing and job performance deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the necessary protective element (protection markers) from the display output rather than blocking the entire display. This allows the sensitive information to remain visible for authorized viewing while extracting just enough information (the markers) to enable post-capture identification and redaction of sensitive regions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of the display output by embedding additional data (protection markers) into the graphics buffer or display stream. This parameter change does not affect the visual content for authorized viewing but adds metadata that enables security functionality in captured content.
3Measurement precision
If protection markers are embedded in display output, then detection accuracy of sensitive regions is improved, but device complexity increases due to marker embedding and processing
Solution Approach 1:
The protection marker serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as an identifier for sensitive regions, provides spatial location information for redaction, and enables detection in both screen captures and photographs. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate systems for different protection scenarios.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses parameter changes by embedding compact marker data with specific properties (such as color, pattern, or metadata) into the display output. These markers are designed with optimized parameters that enable reliable detection while minimizing the computational overhead for embedding and processing.
4Reliability
If visible markers are used to protect against photographing, then protection effectiveness is improved, but display quality and user experience deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by making protection markers visible only in specific contexts (such as in photographs or screen captures) while keeping them invisible or imperceptible during normal display. This is achieved through techniques such as using markers that are below the threshold of human perception under normal viewing conditions but become detectable when captured by cameras or screen capture software.
Data Source
AI summary
Sensitive information displayed on a screen is protected against leakage and loss. A section of a bitmap containing sensitive information is defined as a protection region. A protection marker identifying the protection region is embedded into the bitmap. The defined protection region is divided into multiple sub-regions, and a separate sub-region protection marker is embedded in each sub-region of the original protection region. The defining, embedding and dividing are performed before the bitmap is copied to the screen buffer. When content that was displayed on the screen has been captured, for example by screen capturing software, the captured content is parsed. All sub-region protection markers embedded in the captured content are detected, and a real protection region in the captured content is calculated, based on information in the detected sub-region protection markers. The sensitive information in the captured content is erased.