Verification Lineage Tracking for Data Sets
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data tracking systems fail to efficiently capture and analyze the verification history of data files, making it difficult to identify the origin and circumstances of verification failures, especially in large-scale environments where patterns in data access and alterations are disjointed and lack contextual metadata.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a 'data flight recorder' system that tracks verification requests and metadata for data sets, using digital signatures and verification vectors to create a verification chain, allowing for efficient analysis of verification failures and maintaining a record of document lineage, even in distributed storage environments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If traditional linear audit logs are used to track data access, then verification history is preserved, but patterns are difficult to discern and analysis is inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms the traditional linear audit log into a tree-shaped verification history structure. Each node in the tree represents a verification event with associated metadata, and branches represent different data access paths. This dimensional transformation from linear to hierarchical structure enables pattern recognition and efficient analysis of verification failures by allowing simultaneous viewing of multiple verification paths and their contextual relationships.
2Reliability
If detailed verification metadata is collected for all data access events, then verification failure analysis is improved, but system complexity and storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential verification metadata needed for failure analysis and stores it in a structured tree format. Rather than collecting all possible access information, the system selectively captures verification events, their outcomes, and relevant contextual metadata in a compact hierarchical structure. This extraction approach maintains high reliability for failure detection while minimizing system complexity and storage requirements.
3Measurement precision
If traditional tracking systems monitor individual failure events, then specific failures are detected, but the circumstances and patterns of failures are missed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary action by capturing and preserving the complete verification history and contextual metadata at each verification event, before failures occur. The tree-shaped structure pre-organizes verification events with their contextual information (timestamps, data locations, access patterns, system states), enabling not only precise failure event detection but also comprehensive analysis of failure circumstances and patterns when failures do occur.
Data Source
AI summary
Whenever users receive or transfer a copy of any of a set of documents, prior verification of the document is enforced by an administrative system, which associates verification metadata with the copy. As each copy is itself copied and transferred, updated verification metadata is included with the previous verification metadata to form a verification lineage chain, which can later be examined to determine the circumstances of any verification failure. Documents are preferably verified by comparing the digital signature of the current copy with the signature of a reference copy. Documents may be signed by submitting them as input records to a distributed, keyless, hash tree infrastructure.