Patent ID: 8495736

Claim:
A method for providing information assurance attributes through a data providence architecture, comprising: receiving a message having a data provenance wrapper, the message including one or more attachments and the data provenance wrapper contains a plurality of data provenance records with data provenance information for each of the message and the one or more attachments; examining each of the plurality of data provenance records of the message and of the one or more attachments for discrepancies, the examination of each of the plurality of data provenance records of the message and of the one or more attachments including: verifying signatures of senders of the message and of the one or more attachments; calculating a hash value for the message and for the one or more attachments; verifying that the calculated hash values for the message and for the one or more attachments match respective values in the plurality of data provenance records for the message and for the one or more attachments, separate from the verifying the signatures; verifying timestamps of the message and of the one or more attachments, separate from the verifying the signatures and separate from the verifying the calculated hash values; and verifying information assurance attributes of the message and of the one or more attachments, the information assurance attributes being at least one of authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation, and availability, separate from the verifying the signatures, separate from the verifying the calculated hash values and separate the verifying the timestamps; identifying discrepancies in the examination of each of the plurality of data provenance records of the message and of the one or more attachments; calculating a degree of trust based on (1) security attributes, (2) message identification information included in the message, (3) the plurality of data provenance records and (4) the discrepancies identified in the examination of each of the plurality of data provenance records of the message and of the one or more attachments; and outputting the calculated degree of trust to a user.