Patent ID: 8031875

Claim:
A method of securing information, the method comprising: encrypting raw data into encrypted data based on an initial key, the initial key having a key size; generating a set of key shares from the initial key via application of error correcting code (ECC) encoding, each key share having a size which is independent of the key size; electronically storing each key share on a respective memory device of a set of memory devices, the initial key being reconstructable from a predetermined minimum number of the key shares read from their respective memory devices to enable decryption of the encrypted data; and while electronically storing a particular key share on the respective memory device of that particular key share, electronically storing at least a portion of the encrypted data on the respective memory device; wherein: the set of electronic memory devices are radio frequency identification (RFID) tags; electronically storing the particular key share and the encrypted data on the respective memory device includes writing the particular key share and the encrypted data to memory of a particular RFID tag; each RFID tag is attached to a product; encrypting the raw data into the encrypted data based on the initial key includes encrypting product data of the raw data, the product data indicating that the product belongs to a particular product class among multiple product classes; and the method further comprises: reconstructing the initial key from at least the predetermined minimum number of the key shares; decrypting the encrypted data using the initial key to obtain the raw data; extracting the product data from the raw data to identify the particular product class to which the product belongs; and after extracting the product data from the raw data to identify the particular product class to which the product belongs, updating an inventory database based on the particular product class identified by the extracted product data.