Patent ID: 7293173

Claim:
In a paging operating system having physical memory for holding information and secondary storage comprising a page file for receiving information that is paged out from the physical memory, a computer implemented method of protecting information comprising: creating key during system boot up and page locking the key in the physical memory, wherein creating the key comprises generating a random key with a random key generator each time the system booted up, and wherein different keys can be creating during different system boot ups, and wherein during individual system boot ups, at least one page of non-pageable memory is allocated and access to the at least one page of non-pageable memory is restricted to a system component that performs encryption/decryption; calling an operating system kernel to encrypt information using the key, wherein the calling comprises specifying the address and the size of the information to be encrypted; paging out, to the page file, the encrypted information; and storing the at least one random key in the main memory and locking the at least one random key in the main memory so that it does not get transferred to the secondary storage.