Patent ID: 8527748

Claim:
A monitoring system comprising at least one monitoring device coupled to a monitored system at at least one selected location for collecting data related to the operation of said monitored system, said at least one monitoring devices including communication ports and processors programmed to segment the collected data into blocks optimized for user analysis operations, encrypt said segmented blocks of data, bundle the encrypted blocks of data with unencrypted metadata that identifies the data blocks by at least the monitoring locations at which the encrypted blocks of data were obtained and the type of data, and transmit said encrypted blocks of data with said unencrypted metadata, at least one client device having a communication port coupled to said at least one monitoring devices, said at least one client device having a processor programmed to generate and transmit queries regarding selected ones of said encrypted blocks of data, and a monitoring service coupled to said at least one monitoring device and said client device including a processor programmed to receive and store said encrypted blocks of data with said unencrypted metadata from said at least one monitoring device, process said unencrypted metadata, and retrieve and transmit said selected ones of said encrypted blocks of data with said unencrypted metadata in response to said queries from said client device.