Patent ID: 8543806

Claim:
A system for protecting sensitive data comprising: one or more clients, each client having a data storage and a processor, wherein two or more items of sensitive data within a file have been replaced with a pointer for each item of sensitive data, wherein the pointer indicates where the item of sensitive data item has been stored in a secure storage by a server; the server communicably coupled to the one or more clients; and wherein the processor and the server protect the sensitive data items within the file by restricting subsequent access to and use of the sensitive data items via the pointers by: receiving a first request for data stored in the file on the data storage, determining whether the requested data includes at least one of the pointers, providing the requested data whenever the requested data does not include any of the pointers, and performing the following steps whenever the requested data includes at least one of the pointers: sending a second request containing the pointer(s) included in the requested data to the server that authenticates the second request, denying the first request whenever the authentication fails, and receiving and providing the extracted sensitive data item(s) corresponding to the pointer(s) included in the requested data whenever the authentication succeeds.