Patent ID: 8265969

Claim:
A method of establishing and enforcing compliance for data transactions, the method comprising: analyzing, at a data policy engine operating on a computer, a document schema associated with a document type used by an endpoint pair, the data policy engine operating separately from endpoints of the endpoint pair; presenting, by the data policy engine to a first endpoint of the endpoint pair, a representation of all data elements of the document schema; receiving, at the data policy engine from the first endpoint, user input selecting one or more data elements of the document schema to be disabled for data transactions with a second endpoint of the endpoint pair; establishing, by the data policy engine from the document schema and the user input, a data policy schema for data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint, the data policy schema corresponding to the document type and the endpoint pair; examining, by the data policy engine, the data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint after the data in transit crosses a boundary of a source endpoint of the endpoint pair and before the data in transit crosses a boundary of a destination endpoint of the endpoint pair; selecting, by the data policy engine, the data policy schema when it is determined that the data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint corresponds to the document type and the endpoint pair; and managing compliance to the data policy schema when the data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint includes data elements of the document schema associated with the document type by: editing, at the data policy engine, the data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint to remove the one or more data elements of the document schema to be disabled for data transactions with the second endpoint of the endpoint pair from the data in transit; and validating, by the data policy engine, that required information established by the data policy schema for the document type and endpoint pair is present in the data in transit between the first endpoint and the second endpoint, the required information specifying data elements of the document schema associated with the document type that are required for data transactions with the first endpoint of the endpoint pair and data elements of the document schema associated with the document type that are required for data transactions with the second endpoint of the endpoint pair.