Patent ID: 8694798

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a passphrase; generating a cipher key that is a value having a specified form; enciphering the passphrase using the cipher key to generate an enciphered passphrase to be used as a new cipher key; enciphering the new cipher key using a previous cipher key used to generate the new cipher key in an iterative process until a number of generated new cipher keys is equal to a number of a plurality of archive keys, wherein each new cipher key is generated in view of a unique previous cipher key; enciphering each of the plurality of archive keys using a respective cipher key from the generated new cipher keys; enciphering, by a computer system processing device, each of a plurality of data portions using a respective archive key of the plurality of archive keys; and storing each of the enciphered plurality of data portions with the respective cipher key and a respective enciphered archive key.