System and method for document policy enforcement

1. An article comprising:

at least one tangible, non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing executable computer instructions for document policy enforcement, including:

executable computer instruction for detecting a document event selected from the group consisting of: i) when the document is opened, edited, modified, copied, pasted, saved, archived, deleted, transmitted, exported, printed, burned to DVD, or backed-up; ii) when a new record is added to the document; iii) upon receiving a request to audit the document; and iv) when a policy has been changed;

executable computer instruction for performing, in response to the detected document event, deep content parsing of parts of the document for a set of policy-eliciting terms and for any policy-eliciting terms that are not in the set;

executable computer instruction for assigning a policy to at least one of the parts of the document based on a policy-eliciting term found within the at least one of the parts of the document; and

executable computer instructions for enforcing the assigned policy.

2. The article of claim 1 wherein the policy-eliciting term found within the at least one of the parts of the document is one from a group including: a classification level, a security label, a word, a paragraph, a page, a form, a template, a number, a symbol, a phrase, a pattern, data, a tag, a date, a logo, a code, computer code, a file, a record, a part of a copyrighted work, a product name, and wherein the at least one of the parts of the document further includes an other policy-eliciting term having: an error, a linguistic variation, a letter case variation, a plural form, and a regular expression.

3. The article of claim 1 , wherein the executable computer instructions for performing deep content parsing further include:

executable computer instructions for scanning, within the document, a structured field, an unstructured field, a document header, a document footer, a document body, document metadata, a predefined set of document pages, a predefined set of document slides, and combinations thereof.

4. The article of claim 1 wherein the assigned policy includes one from a group including: a permitted set of actions; a denied set of actions; a set of modification actions; and a set of alerts and logs.

5. The article of claim 4 wherein the actions include one from a group including: rights to copy, duplicate, save, encrypt, export, print, and e-mail the document part; and rules for effecting the aforementioned document part rights.

6. The article of claim 1 wherein the executable computer instructions for assigning include:

executable computer instructions for assigning the policy to the at least one of the parts of the document based on a user identifier;

wherein the user identifier identifies one from a group including: a user, a class of users, a user role, an individual, a network service, and a program.

7. The article of claim 1 wherein a plurality of policies are respectively assigned to a plurality of the parts of the document, and wherein the executable computer instructions for assigning the policy further comprise:

recording the assigned plurality of policies in a classification signature, thereby identifying which of the assigned plurality of policies is applied to each of the plurality of the parts.

8. A system for document polity enforcement, comprising:

a computer programmed with executable instructions which operate a set of modules, wherein the modules comprise:

a policy editor for:

generating a policy: and

associating the generated polity with a set of policy-eliciting terms; and

a policy daemon for:

detecting a document event selected from the group consisting of: i) when the document is opened, edited, modified, copied, pasted, saved, archived, deleted, transmitted, exported, printed, burned to DVD, or backed-up; ii) when a new record is added to the document; iii) upon receiving a request to audit the document; and iv) when the generated polity has been changed;

performing, in response to the detected document event, deep content parsing of parts of the document for the set of policy-eliciting terms and for any policy-eliciting terms that are not in the set;

dynamically assigning a policy to at least one of the parts of the document based on a policy-eliciting term found within the at least one of the parts of the document; and

enforcing the assigned policy.

9. The system of claim 8 , further comprising:

a local system, including an instance of the policy daemon;

a policy server, including the policy editor, and a policy repository for storing policies; and

a document repository for storing the parts of the document.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the local system is one from a group including: a printer, a mobile device, and a desktop computer.

11. A method, effected by a computer programmed with executable instructions, for document policy enforcement, comprising:

detecting a document event selected from the group consisting of: i) when the document is opened, edited, modified, copied, pasted, saved, archived, detected, transmitted, exported, printed, burned to DVD, or backed-up; ii) when a new record is added to the document; iii) upon receiving a request to audit the document; and iv) when a policy has been changed;

in response to the detected document event, performing deep content parsing of parts of the document for a set of policy-eliciting terms for any policy-eliciting terms that are not in the set;

assigning a policy to at least one of the parts of the document based on a policy-eliciting term found within the at least one of the document parts; and

enforcing the assigned policy.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the assigned policy includes one from a group including: a permitted set of actions; a denied set of actions; a set of modification actions; and a set of alerts and logs.