Utilizing a mnemonic for communicating sensitive data

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11989319-B2
Application number	US-202117144413-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 8, 2021
Priority date	Jan 6, 2017
Publication date	May 21, 2024
Grant date	May 21, 2024

Abstract

Systems and methods for utilizing a mnemonic to communicate sensitive data to an agent are disclosed. In aspects, a computer-implemented method comprises: establishing a telephone connection between a caller and an agent; entering an encryption key received from the agent into a mnemonic application of the computer device to permute an algorithm of the mnemonic application; receiving sensitive data in the form of one or more alphabetic, numeric or alpha-numeric sequence; initiating the mnemonic application to generate a mnemonic of the sensitive data using the encryption key, wherein the mnemonic is a sequence of words representing the sensitive data; displaying the mnemonic to the caller; and conveying audio communication of the mnemonic to the agent through the telephone connection to enable remote decoding of the mnemonic back into the at least one sensitive number sequence.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
establishing, by a computing device of a caller, a telephone connection between the caller and a telephone of an agent;
sending, by the computing device of the caller, location data of the caller to the agent;
receiving, by the computing device of the caller, an encryption key from the agent, wherein the encryption key corresponds to the location data of the caller;
entering, by the computing device of the caller, the encryption key received from the agent into a mnemonic application of the computer device of the caller;
identifying, by the computing device of the caller, an indexed table of words based on the encryption key, wherein the indexed table of words corresponds to the location data of the caller to the agent;
permuting, by the computing device of the caller, an algorithm of the mnemonic application using the encryption key, thereby configuring the algorithm to encode sensitive data based on the encryption key;
receiving, by the computing device of the caller, the sensitive data in the form of an alphabetic sequence;
generating, by the algorithm of the mnemonic application of the computing device of the caller and based on the indexed table of words, a mnemonic of the sensitive data, wherein the mnemonic is a sequence of words representing the sensitive data;
displaying, by the computing device of the caller, the mnemonic to the caller; and
conveying, by the computing device of the caller, an audio communication of the mnemonic to the agent through the telephone connection to enable remote decoding of the mnemonic back into the sensitive data utilizing the encryption key.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
entering, by the computing device of the caller, the sensitive data into the computing device of the caller; and
storing, by the computing device of the caller, the sensitive data in a database of the computing device of the caller.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein entering the sensitive data into the mnemonic application of the computing device of the caller comprises:
initiating, by the computing device of the caller, a camera to take a digital picture of the sensitive data; and
initiating, by the computing device of the caller, a character recognition function to determine the sensitive data from the digital picture.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the sensitive data is a credit card number.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising receiving, by the computing device of the caller, an audio communication of the encryption key over the telephone connection.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
implementing, by the computing device of the caller, voice recognition software to determine the encryption key received via the audio communication; and
storing, by the computing device of the caller, the encryption key in a database of the computing device of the caller.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the location data is global positioning system data from the computing device of the caller.

8. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to:
establish a telephone connection between the computing device and a telephone of a remote agent, wherein the computing device is a computing device of a caller;
send location data of the caller to the agent;
receive an encryption key from the remote agent, wherein the encryption key is selected based on the location data of the caller;
enter the encryption key into a mnemonic application of the computing device;
identify an indexed table of words based on the encryption key, wherein the indexed table of words corresponds to the location data of the caller to the agent;
permute an algorithm of the mnemonic application using the encryption key, thereby configuring the algorithm to encode sensitive data based on the encryption key;
enter the sensitive data in the form of an alphabetic sequence into the mnemonic application of the computing device;
generate, by the algorithm of the mnemonic application and based on the indexed table of words, a mnemonic of the sensitive data, wherein the mnemonic is a sequence of words representing the sensitive data;
display the mnemonic to the caller; and
convey audio communication of the mnemonic to the remote agent through the telephone connection to enable remote decoding of the mnemonic back into the alphabetic sequence utilizing the encryption key.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to store the sensitive data in a database of the computer device.

10. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to receive an audio communication of the encryption key over the telephone connection.

11. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to:
implement voice recognition software to determine the encryption key received via the audio communication; and
store the encryption key in a database of the computing device.

12. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to:
initiate a camera to take a digital picture of the sensitive data;
initiate a character recognition function to determine the sensitive data from the digital picture; and
store the sensitive data in a database of the computing device.

13. The computer program product of claim 8 , wherein the location data of the caller is in the form of global positioning system (GPS) data of the computing device, wherein the mnemonic is derived, at least in part, based on the GPS data.

14. A computing device of a caller comprising:
a CPU; a computer readable memory; and a computer readable storage medium comprising program instructions which are executable by the CPU to:
establish a telephone connection between the computing device and a telephone of a remote agent;
send location data of the computing device to the agent;
receive an encryption key from the remote agent, wherein the encryption key corresponds to the location data of the computing device;
enter the encryption key into a mnemonic application of the computing device;
identify an indexed table of words based on the encryption key, wherein the indexed table of words corresponds to the location data of the caller to the agent;
permute an algorithm of the mnemonic application using the encryption key, thereby configuring the algorithm to encode sensitive data based on the encryption key;
enter the sensitive data into the mnemonic application of the computing device, the sensitive data comprising an alphabetic sequence;
generate, by the algorithm of the mnemonic application and based on the indexed table of words, a mnemonic of the sensitive data, wherein the mnemonic is a sequence of words representing the sensitive data;
display the mnemonic to the caller; and
convey audio communication of the mnemonic to the remote agent through the telephone connection to enable remote decoding of the mnemonic back into the sensitive data utilizing the encryption key.

15. The computing device of claim 14 , wherein the program instructions are further executable to: store the sensitive data in a database of the computer device, wher

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Ogle David M
• Tkac Vincent

Classifications

• G06F21/6245 Primary

  Protecting personal data, e.g. for financial or medical purposes · CPC title

• G06F21/42

  using separate channels for security data · CPC title

• G06Q20/38215

  Use of certificates or encrypted proofs of transaction rights · CPC title

• H04L9/0618

  Block ciphers, i.e. encrypting groups of characters of a plain text message using fixed encryption transformation · CPC title

• H04L63/0428

  wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload · CPC title