Patent ID: 8001607
Filing Date: 2011-08-16
Classification: H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A system for obfuscating data across an enterprise, comprising: (a) a rule evaluator; (b) an active rule editor; (c) an active rule editor repository; (d) a candidate rule editor; and (e) a candidate rule editor repository; wherein the enterprise has one or more data systems comprising data; wherein the rule evaluator evaluates active rules and optimizes its behavior based on both user-specified guidance and properties learned during system execution; wherein the active rule editor provides functionality for specifying, examining, maintaining, simulating and testing active rule behavior and for documenting rules that are bound to any named and typed data spaces of the enterprise that are accessible through connectors to the data systems of the enterprise; wherein the active rule editor and repository provide functionality for promoting a candidate rule to an active rule and managing the rule in its active state; wherein the candidate rule editor provides functionality for specifying, examining, maintaining, simulating and testing active rule behavior and for documenting rules that are bound to any named and typed data spaces of the enterprise that are accessible through connectors to the data systems of the enterprise; wherein the candidate rule editor and repository provide functionality for developing rules that are candidates for subsequent use as active rules; wherein the system uses the rule evaluator to control elimination and retention of patterns of characters in the data, replaces values with other values in the data, and replaces data items with constant values; wherein the system dynamically creates a plan for solving a problem and then updates the plan as it discovers rules that present solutions to pending rules or finds more rules to evaluate; wherein when a rule evaluation is executed, it either succeeds or fails, wherein an ancestor rule evaluation is a rule evaluation that must succeed prior to a previous ancestor rule evaluation being executed, and wherein the system automatically discovers subsequent rule evaluations to be executed, executes the subsequent rule evaluations in parallel, and conditionally executes any rule evaluation based not only on the success of ancestor rule evaluations but also on the success of any rule known to the system; wherein each active rule comprises one or more variables, and each active rule has a behavior that expresses quantification of the variables in that rule as logic quantifiers; wherein the system uses intensional rules that describe intended aspects of solutions or goals involved in other rules to obfuscate a data item; wherein the system uses transducer-type rules, each having a specification, to support probabilistic selection of alternative changes of state of the transducer-type rule itself and to learn which alternative state changes are more successful than others, and wherein the system updates the specification of the transducer-type rule involved as probabilistic information is learned; wherein a transducer-type rule is able to dynamically create, modify and/or destroy one or more other transducer-type rules, and invocation of any new or modified transducer-type rule is enabled immediately or based on subsequent use of the new or modified transducer-type rule; and wherein the rule evaluator includes functionality for testing both candidate and active rules through tracing and simulating execution behavior of a rule, and wherein the simulation functionality includes the ability to block data changes to the data systems of the enterprise.