International Business Machines Corporation
Data protection using functional encryption

Abstract:

A method of limiting data usage for certified purposes by using functional encryption, comprising: receiving from a software publisher an application code and declared privacy information, the declared privacy information specifies at least one declared usage for at least one data type; analyzing the application's usage of data collected by the application, to identify an actual usage of the at least one data type by a function; identifying when the actual usage is compliant with the at least one declared usage according to the analysis; in response to the identification, creating a pair of a public key and a master private key; creating a function private key for the function using the master private key; and sending the function private key to the software publisher to be used for operating the function on data which is encrypted using the public key.