Patent ID: 8898792

Claim:
An information security system comprising: a network; a secure storage device that stores encrypted data and encrypted headers relating to the encrypted data; a protected device comprising a storage device that stores classified unencrypted metadata relating to the encrypted data and addresses of the encrypted headers relating to the encrypted data, the protected storage device being physically separate from the secure storage device; a user computer that securely communicates at a particular access level over the network with the protected device and generates a search request relating to the encrypted data; a search engine disposed on the protected device that interfaces with the user computer to process the search request to return a set of addresses corresponding to headers associated with desired data that are at the particular access level and satisfy the search request, transfers the set of addresses to the secure storage device that stores the encrypted headers, and transfers the encrypted headers without the encrypted data to the user computer that generated the search request, wherein the storage device of the protected device does not store the encrypted data, wherein there is no instance of the encrypted data in the protected device, and wherein the protected device is accessible only by a user having the particular access level, the particular access level being one of a plurality of access levels.