Patent ID: 8826448

Claim:
A system for protecting sensitive data comprising: one or more clients, each client having a respective processor and a respective data storage device communicably coupled to its respective processor; and a server communicably coupled to the one or more clients; wherein a first one of the clients and the server protect sensitive data items stored by the first one of the clients in a respective first data storage device by restricting subsequent access to and use of the sensitive data items by: the first one of the clients replacing the sensitive data items with one or more pointers received from the server, the one or more pointers comprising non-sensitive data of a same data type as the sensitive data and indicating one or more locations where the sensitive data items have been stored in a secure storage by the server, a respective first processor of the first one of the clients receiving a first request for data, the first processor determining whether the first request requires one or more items of sensitive data, the first processor providing the requested data from a respective first storage device of the first one of the clients when the first request does not require sensitive data, otherwise performing the following steps when the first request requires the one or more sensitive data items: the first one of the clients sending a second request containing one or more pointers to the server, the server authenticating the second request, the server denying the second request when the authentication fails, and the server providing the one or more sensitive data items corresponding to the one or more pointers included in the second request when the authentication succeeds.