Patent ID: 6915435

Claim:
A method for managing information retention in a system, comprising: receiving a set of information into a system; associating one or more keys with said set of information; encrypting said set of information using said one or more keys; storing said set of information in encrypted form into one or more repositories, wherein only the encrypted form of the set of information is persistently stored within the information system and no unencrypted form of the set of information is persistently stored within the information system; purging said set of information from the system so that said set of information is not available to a user from the system by deleting said one or more keys, thereby making said set of information unrenderable; prior to deletion of said one or more keys, receiving a request from an information sink to render said set of information to a user accessing the encrypted form of said set of information from the one or more repositories; accessing said one or more keys; providing the encrypted form of said set of information and said one or more keys to the information sink to enable the information sink to decrypt the encrypted form of said set of information; and using said one or more keys to render said set of information to the user, wherein the information sink comprises sufficient logic to prevent it from persistently storing said one or more keys received from an information manager.