SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DOCUMENT POLICY ENFORCEMENT

• US 20130104190A1
• Filed: 07/08/2010
• Published: 04/25/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/08/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Workday Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Simske, Steven J., Balinsky, Helen
• Granted Patent: US 8,943,603 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/60 Protecting data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A system and method is disclosed for document policy enforcement. The method discloses: scanning document parts for a set of policy-eliciting terms 206; assigning a policy 204 to a document part based on a policy-eliciting term 206 found within the document part; and enforcing the policy 204. The system discloses a computer programmed with executable instructions which operate a set of modules, wherein the modules comprise: a policy editor 112 and a policy daemon 108, for effecting the method.

Claims

1. An article comprising at least one computer-readable storage medium containing executable computer instructions for document policy enforcement, further comprising:

scanning document parts for a set of policy-eliciting terms 206;

assigning a policy 204 to a document part based on a policy-eliciting term 206 found within the document part; and

enforcing the policy 204.

2. The instructions of claim 1:

wherein the policy-eliciting term 206 is one from a group including;

a classification level, a security label, a word, a paragraph, a page, a form, a template, a number, a symbol, a phrase, a pattern, data, a tag, a date, a logo, a code, computer code, a file, a document, a record, a part of a copyrighted work, a product name, and further including a policy-eliciting term 206 having;

an error, a linguistic variation, a letter case variation, a plural form, and a regular expression.

3. The instructions of claim 1, wherein scanning includes:

scanning one from a group of document parts including;

a structured field, an unstructured field, a document header, a document footer, a document body, document metadata, and predefined set of document pages, slides, and parts.

4. The instructions of claim 1

wherein the policy includes one from a group including:

a permitted set of actions 210;

a denied set of actions 212;

a set of modification actions 214, and a set of alerts and logs 216.

5. The instructions of claim 4:

wherein the actions 210, 212, and 214 include one from a group including;

rights to copy, duplicate, save, encrypt, export, print, and e-mail the document part; and

rules for effecting the aforementioned document part rights.

6. The instructions of claim 1, further comprising:

detecting a document event; and

performing the scanning, assigning and enforcing in response to the detected document event.

7. The instructions of claim 6:

wherein the document event is one from a group including;

a document changing event;

a document handling event;

when the document is created, opened, edited, modified, copied, pasted, saved, archived, deleted, transmitted, exported, printed, burned to DVD, backed-up;

when a new record is added to the document;

upon receiving a request to audit the document; and

when a policy has been changed.

8. The instructions of claim 1 wherein assigning includes:

assigning the policy 204 to a part of the document based on a user identifier 208; and

wherein the user identifier 208 identifies one from a group including;

a user, a class of users, a user role, an individual, a network service, and a program.

9. The instructions of claim 1, further comprising:

recording assigned policies 204 in a classification signature 302, thereby identifying which assigned policies 204 are applied to each of the document parts 304.

10. A system for document policy enforcement, comprising:

a computer programmed with executable instructions which operate a set of modules, wherein the modules comprise;

a policy editor 112 for;

generating a policy 204; and

associating the policy with a set of policy-eliciting terms 206; and

a policy daemon 108 for;

scanning document parts for the set of policy-eliciting terms 206;

assigning the policy 204 to a document part based on the policy-eliciting term 206 found within the document part; and

enforcing the policy 204.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

a local system 104, including an instance of the policy daemon 108;

a policy server 105, including the policy editor 112, and a policy repository 110 for storing policies; and

a document repository 114 for storing the document parts.

12. The system of claim 11,

wherein the local system 104, is one from a group including:

a printer, a mobile device, and a desktop computer.

13. A method, effected by a computer programmed with executable instructions, for document policy enforcement, comprising:

scanning document parts for a set of policy-eliciting terms 206;

assigning a policy 204 to a document part based on a policy-eliciting term 206 found within the document part; and

enforcing the policy 204. 14, The method of claim 13;

wherein the policy includes one from a group including;

a permitted set of actions 210;

a denied set of actions 212;

a set of modification actions 214, and a set of alerts and logs 216. 15, The instructions of claim 13, further comprising;

detecting a document event; and

performing the scanning, assigning and enforcing in response to the detected document event.