Selective Message Encryption for Secure Cross-Team Collaboration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current email systems lack mechanisms to facilitate collaboration across different teams in corporate environments, leading to conflicts due to unsuitable communication tools for sharing sensitive information across organizational boundaries.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for encrypting a portion of a message intended for a group of recipients, allowing selective access to the encrypted content based on user-defined permissions, using public key infrastructure to restrict access to sensitive information within the message.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If email is used for broad collaboration across teams, then communication coverage is improved, but security control deteriorates because all recipients can access all content
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the message content into multiple portions, where each portion is encrypted with a different key and can be accessed by different subsets of recipients. This allows the system to maintain broad communication coverage while implementing fine-grained security control, as each sensitive portion is protected independently with access restricted to specific recipients who possess the corresponding decryption keys.
2Reliability
If selective access control is implemented for message portions, then security control is improved, but system complexity deteriorates due to multiple encryption keys and access management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-distributing decryption keys to recipients before the message is sent. The sender identifies which recipients should have access to which message portions and provides them with the appropriate decryption keys in advance. This preliminary key distribution simplifies the system architecture by eliminating the need for complex real-time key management and access control mechanisms during message transmission and reading.
Data Source
AI summary
A portion of text associated with a message intended for a group of recipients is encrypted at a computing device. The portion of text may include less than an entirety of the message. Access to the portion of text may be restricted for a first subset of the group of recipients and allowed for a second subset of the group of recipients.