Symantec Assigned Patent

Symantec Operating Corp., Mountain View, CA has been assigned a patent (8,199,911) developed by Ynn-Pyng ‘Anker’ Tsaur, Oviedo, FL., and William T. Cochran, Orlando, FL, for a "secure encryption algorithm for data deduplication on untrusted storage."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Various methods and systems for performing data deduplication when encrypting data for storage on an untrusted storage system are disclosed. One method involves generating an encryption key for use in encrypting data and generating an identifier for the data. Generation of the encryption key is based upon a hash of the data to be encrypted. Similarly, generation of the identifier is based upon the hash of the data to be generated. For example, the identifier can be generated by hashing the encryption key. The method then involves detecting whether an encrypted copy of the data is already stored by a storage system, based upon the identifier, and selectively encrypting the data, based upon whether the encrypted copy of the data is already stored by the storage system."

The patent application was filed on March 31, 2008 (12/058,833)