Patent ID: 7845013

Claim:
A file security protection method, said method comprising: a processor of a computer system receiving a metadata token from a software application executing on the computer system, said metadata token denoting that the application has opened a file having a name, said metadata token comprising the name of the file; responsive to receiving the metadata token, said processor setting an initial time to a time at which said receiving the metadata token occurred; and after setting the initial time, said processor executing iterations of a loop, each iteration of said iterations comprising determining whether a first condition has been satisfied, determining whether a second condition has been satisfied, and exiting the loop in response to having determined that the first condition or the second condition has been satisfied, wherein the first condition is that an elapsed time relative the initial time exceeds a specified threshold, and wherein the second condition is that a closeout token denoting that the file has been closed has been received from the application such that the closeout token comprises the name of the file.