Patent ID: 8645715
Filing Date: 2014-02-04
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An article of manufacture comprising a computer readable storage device including code executed to communicate data to a removable storage medium coupled to a storage drive managing read and write access to the removable storage medium and to perform operations, the operations comprising: receiving user settings to configure a data class data structure having data attributes with encryption settings; storing the data class with the received user encryption settings; receiving a job indicating a data set to store to the removable storage medium; determining a data class data structure, from a plurality of data class data structures, having data class attributes matching data attributes of the data set indicated in the job, wherein the data attributes of the data set used to determine the data class data structure comprise at least one of an identity of the creator of the data in the data set, a data type of the data, and a user group of the data set, wherein the determined data class data structure includes an encryption setting indicating whether to encrypt the data and a key label identifying a key encrypting key used for encryption; determining from the encryption settings in the determined data class data structure whether to encrypt the data; transmitting the data set with a command to encrypt the data set to the storage drive in response to determining that the encryption settings of the determined data class data structure indicates to encrypt the data; transmitting a key label indicated in one of the job and the data class structure to the storage drive, wherein the key label indicated in the data class structure is not transmitted if the key encrypting key indicated in the job is transmitted, wherein the key encrypting key indicated in the transmitted key label is used to encrypt an encryption key which the storage drive uses to encrypt the data set written to the removable storage medium, and wherein the command to encrypt the data set causes the storage drive to encrypt the data set transmitted with the command with the encryption key when writing the data set to the removable storage medium.