Patent ID: 8195956

Claim:
A system, comprising: an encryption engine; and a host processor coupled to said encryption engine, wherein said host processor determines when a time period has expired for a unit of data, and upon determining that said time period has expired, said host processor causes said encryption engine to re-key said unit of data in place by: a scratch space portion of the unit of data from a storage unit to memory; causing at least a second portion of the unit of data to be read from the storage unit and stored to the scratch space portion; setting a status flag to a read complete state to indicate that the second portion has been read; rekeyinq the scratch space portion to produce re-encrypted data; storing the re-encrypted data on the storage unit thereby overwriting the second portion of the unit of data; and changing the status flag to a write complete state to indicate that the re-encrypted data has been stored back in the storage unit.