Patent ID: 8316455

Claim:
In a computing environment including a computing system, in an enterprise comprising one or more of branch offices, a method of accessing data, the method comprising one or more computer processors executing computer executable instructions, causing the one or more processors to perform the following: accessing a data set image, wherein the data set image comprises secret data and non-secret data, and wherein the data set image is derived from an authorized data set associated with a master key that authorizes access to the secret data in the authorized data set, the authorized data set including the master key, and wherein the master key is removed from the authorized data to create the data set image and is not provided with the data set image; restoring the data set image to the computing system to create a degraded data set on the computing system, wherein the degraded data set includes the secret data, and the non-secret data and wherein the non-secret data continues to be accessible by the computing system on which the data set image was restored, but wherein the secret data is not accessible to the computing system in a sense that the secret cannot be read in an unencrypted form without the master key; accessing data in the degraded data set other than the secret data without restoring the master key, while being prevented from accessing secret data so long as the master key has not been restored; and wherein restoring the data set image to the computing system to create a degraded data set on the computing system comprises creating one or more reduced functionality clones of a distributed resource on a network, for which the enterprise desires to give access to the data on the data set but in a reduced fashion to the one or more branch offices, by restoring the data set without the master key at the one or more branch offices, such that the one or more reduced functionality clones comprise the degraded data set including the secret data, and the non-secret data and wherein the non-secret data continues to be accessible by the reduced functionality clones at which the data set image was restored, but wherein the secret data is not accessible by the reduced functionality clones in a sense that the secret data cannot be read in an unencrypted form without the master key.