Patent ID: 8869295

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying, by a computing device having a processor and memory, a first plurality of business purpose activities associated with an entity; assigning, by a computing device having a processor and memory, a second plurality of business purpose activities to each employee of a plurality of employees of the entity, the second plurality of business purpose activities being a subset of the first plurality of business purpose activities; identifying, by the computing device, a plurality of data elements to be protected, the plurality of data elements including data elements internal to the entity and data elements received by the entity from a third party, the plurality of data elements being associated with at least one user of the entity; assigning, by the computing device, a numeric access value to each data element of the plurality of data elements for each identified business purpose activity of the first plurality of business purpose activities, wherein the numeric access value indicates a level of access to the data element of the plurality of data elements to which it is assigned permitted for an employee of the entity acting under the respective business purpose activity; and determining, by the computing device, whether a data element of the plurality of protected data elements associated with the at least one user of the entity is provided by a third-party entity different from the entity, wherein when it is determined that the data element is provided by the third-party entity, the numeric access value is conditioned on a preference of the at least one user of the entity.