Patent ID: 7543160

Claim:
A method of generating a security indicator on a display of a computing device, wherein secure data is stored on the computing device, wherein the secure data, when encrypted, can be decrypted using at least one encryption key in decrypted form, and wherein the method comprises: detecting when the computing device attains a locked state in which access to the device is prevented until a user is successfully authenticated; determining if any of the secure data can be decrypted by any of one or more applications residing on the computing device while the computing device is in the locked state; displaying a first indicator if it is determined that at least some of the secure data can be decrypted by at least one of the one or more applications while the computing device is in the locked state; and displaying a second indicator if it is determined that none of the secure data can be decrypted by any of the one or more applications on the computing device while the computing device is in the locked state; wherein the method further comprises: issuing a ticket while the computing device is not in a locked state to each application requesting access to the secure data in order to perform an action, wherein each application is adapted to release the ticket issued thereto when the action is completed; deleting the at least one encryption key upon determining that all issued tickets have been released, such that none of the secure data can be decrypted by any of the one or more applications residing on the computing device; wherein said determining if any of the secure data can be decrypted by any of one or more applications residing on the computing device comprises determining whether all issued tickets have been released; for each of at least one application, marking a subset of the secure data as plaintext when the subset is decrypted for use by the respective application while the computing device is not in a locked state, wherein the respective application is adapted to delete the marked subset after use thereof; and determining that all marked subsets are deleted before the second indicator is displayed.