DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-18 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
No IDSs have been received by the Office.
Claim Objections
Claims 9 and 18 are objected to because of the following informalities: line 11 of claim 9 and line 13 of claim 18 contain the phrase “in in”. The Examiner assumes that claim 18 depends from claim 10. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US PG Pub. No. 2022/0283930 to Figueredo de Santana (hereinafter Santana) in view US PG Pub. No. 2020/0351079 to Horst et al. (hereinafter Horst).
As to claims 1 and 10, Santana teaches:
a. One or more processors and one or more storage devices storing instructions that are configured, when executed by the one or more processors, to cause the one or processors to perform the following (processors, memory, and programs) (Santana, [0051]).
b. Determining occurrence of errors generated by an executing application, the executing application being used to process individual instances of user data (software errors with regard to sensitive user data are detected and logged to log files) (Santana, [0025]).
c. Logging the errors in an error log (software errors with regard to sensitive user data are detected and logged to log files) (Santana, [0025]).
d. For each error of a subset of the errors, identifying a corresponding instance of the user data that the executing application was processing at a time of occurrence of the error (software errors with regard to sensitive user data are detected and logged to log files) (Santana, [0025]).
Santana anonymizes user data but does not expressly mention using placeholders. However, in an analogous art, Horst teaches:
e. Generating a placeholder for the corresponding instance of the user data in the error log (placeholder/token is generated for each occurrence of sensitive user data) (Horst, [0066-0067]).
Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application would have been motivated to implement the detection of sensitive user data of Santana with the generation of a placeholder of Horst in order to better protect sensitive user data as suggested by Horst (Horst, [0007]).
Santana as modified further teaches:
f. Generating a corresponding instance of pseudo data for the corresponding instance of the user data that the executing application was processing at the time of occurrence of the error (tokens/placeholders are equivalent to pseudo data as the tokens consist of anonymized sensitive user data) (Horst, [0066-0067]).
g. Including the generated corresponding instance of pseudo data in the placeholder in the error log (anonymized sensitive user data is saved in trace logs) (Santana, [0025]).
As to claims 2 and 11, Santana as modified teaches generating a corresponding instance of pseudo data comprises encrypting the corresponding instance of the user data that the executing application was processing at the time of occurrence of the error using an encryption key (a cryptographic operation consisting of a plurality of replacement tables (keys) to anonymize the plaintext sensitive user data into tokens) (Horst, [0013-0016 and 0039-0042]).
As to claims 3 and 12, Santana as modified teaches the same encryption key is used to generate corresponding instances of pseudo data for each error of the subset of the errors (each generated placeholder/token is unique even if the instances of sensitive user data is exactly the same) (Horst, [0025]). This is seen as an advancement over the claimed limitation as security is enhanced.
As to claims 4 and 13, Santana as modified teaches corresponding different encryption keys are used to generate respective corresponding instances of pseudo data for each error of the subset of the errors (each generated placeholder/token is unique even if the instances of sensitive user data is exactly the same) (Horst, [0025]).
As to claims 5 and 14, Santana as modified teaches encrypting corresponding different encryption keys for the respective corresponding instances of the pseudo data and storing the encrypted corresponding different encryption keys along with the respective corresponding instances of the pseudo data in the corresponding placeholders in the error log (the tokens hold all the data needed to recreate the tokenized sensitive user data using replacement tables) (Horst, [0013-0016 and 0039-0042]).
As to claims 6 and 15, Santana as modified teaches generating a corresponding instance of pseudo data comprises storing the corresponding instance of the user data that the executing application was processing at the time of the occurrence of the error at a secure storage location, and including a reference to the secure storage location as the pseudo data in the placeholder in the error log (replacement tables are stored in storage devices and are used to restore the sensitive user data) (Horst, [0039-0042]). This is an improvement over storing the actual sensitive user data as even if a malicious operator gains access to the replacement tables the sensitive user data is not exposed.
As to claims 7 and 16, Santana as modified teaches the secure storage location is a second storage location separate from a first storage location containing the error log does not provide corresponding access to the second storage location containing the user data (there are multiple storage devices and storing data in different devices is an obvious variation to one of ordinary skill) (Horst, [0039-0042] and Santana, [0078]). As noted above in claims 6 and 15, Santana as modified does not store the actual sensitive user data as even if a malicious operator gains access to the replacement tables the sensitive user data is not exposed.
As to claims 8 and 17, Santana as modified teaches the user data is stored in encrypted form at the second storage location (a cryptographic operation consisting of a plurality of replacement tables (keys) to anonymize the plaintext sensitive user data into tokens) (Horst, [0013-0016 and 0039-0042]). Santana as modified does not store the actual sensitive user data or encrypted sensitive user data as even if a malicious operator gains access to the replacement tables the sensitive user data is not exposed.
As to claims 9 and 18, Santana as modified teaches:
a. Requesting access to user data corresponding to particular instances of the pseudo data contained in one or more placeholders (whether to replace the sensitive user data depends on an entropy score) (Santana, [0025]).
b. Reviewing particular instances of user data corresponding to the requested particular instances of pseudo data to determine if the particular instances of pseudo data should be replaced with the particular instances of user data (whether to replace the sensitive user data depends on an entropy score) (Santana, [0025]).
c. In response to a determination that the particular instance of pseudo data should be replaced with corresponding user data, replacing the pseudo data of the corresponding placeholder with the corresponding the corresponding user data in the error log (sensitive data above the entropy threshold, there is no replacement) (Santana, [0025).
d. In response to a determination that the particular instance of pseudo data should be replaced with corresponding user data, maintaining the pseudo data of the corresponding placeholder in the error log (sensitive data below the entropy threshold, there is replacement) (Santana, [0025).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WILLIAM S POWERS whose telephone number is (571)272-8573. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-17:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jorge L Ortiz-Criado can be reached at (571) 272-7624. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WILLIAM S POWERS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2496
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