Providing differential access to a digital document

摘要

In a method for providing differential access to a digital document among workflow participants, in which at least one of the workflow participants is outside of a common secure environment (300), a first set of keys including an encryption key, a signature key, and a verification key is associated with atomic unit(s) (304). The atomic unit(s) is encrypted using the encryption key and signed using the signature key (306, 308). A level of access to the atomic unit(s) to be granted to each of the workflow participants and the keys in the first set of keys to supply to each of the workflow participants based upon the identified level of access are identified (310, 312). In addition, each of the workflow participants is supplied with the identified one or more keys (314) and the encrypted and signed atomic unit(s) is supplied to a first workflow participant (316).

主权项

1. A method (300) for providing differential access to a digital document (120) among a plurality of workflow participants (110a-110n), wherein at least one of the plurality of workflow participants is outside of at least one of a common and a uniformly-secure environment, said digital document comprising at least one atomic unit (122a), said method comprising:
associating a first set of keys with the at least one atomic unit (304), said first set of keys comprising an encryption key, a signature key, and a verification key; encrypting the at least one atomic unit using the encryption key (306); signing the encrypted at least one atomic unit using the signature key (308); identifying a level of access from a plurality of access levels to the at least one atomic unit to be granted to each of the workflow participants (310); identifying which of the keys in the first set of keys to supply to each of the workflow participants based upon the identified level of access (312); supplying each of the workflow participants with the identified one or more keys (314), wherein the encryption key enables reading, the signature key enables modification, and the verification key enables authentication of the at least one atomic unit; and supplying the encrypted and signed at least one atomic unit to a fire workflow participant of the plurality of workflow participants (316).