Patent ID: 8565436

Claim:
A method for securing data, the method comprising: assigning a classification level to the data; assigning a unique identification (ID) to the data; assigning an expiration period to the data; obtaining a master application key for encryption from a key site, wherein the master application key is specific to a user application; the master application key is encrypted using a master key seal key; and the encrypted master application key is broken into multiple parts that are stored separately; generating a main secure self-managed data (SSMD) key using the unique ID and the master application key, wherein the generated main SSMD key is never stored anywhere and is not shared; and encoding the data, unique ID, expiration period, and data classification level using the generated main SSMD key that is never stored anywhere and is not shared, wherein the encoded data and encoded unique ID, expiration period, and data classification level form an SSMD encoded data, wherein: the generated SSMD key that is not stored anywhere and is not shared is used to decode the SSMD encoded data, including decoding the data classification level of the SSMD encoded data included in the SSMD encoded data.