Patent ID: 7752676

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, by a computational device, a request to access data from a requestor, wherein the data is legacy data that is stored in a storage unit, wherein the legacy data is pre-existing data, wherein the legacy data is stored in the storage unit in an unencrypted state at least until the time an attempt is made to access the legacy data, and wherein data that is not legacy data is stored in the storage unit in an encrypted state; determining, by the computational device, that the requestor is authorized to access the data; determining, by the computational device, that the data is not encrypted, in response to determining that the requestor is authorized to access the data; requesting, by the computational device, an encryption key from the requestor, in response to determining that the data is not encrypted; receiving the encryption key from the requestor; encrypting the data by using the encryption key; and migrating all legacy data stored in the storage unit to encrypted data stored in the storage unit over an extended period of time.