Securitymetrics, Inc.

Nathan K Stocks

Alan B Butt

A data string that includes potentially sensitive information, such as an account number for a payment card, may be evaluated using a delimiter search to provide an increased level of confidence that the data string encodes the sensitive information of interest. A delimiter search may include an evaluation of the bytes adjacent to the beginning and end of the data to determine whether or not those bytes have values that correspond to the values of known delimiters. A data string that is not surrounded by known delimiters may be disregarded (i.e., considered not to comprise sensitive information of interest), while a data string that is surrounded by known delimiters may warrant further evaluation.

Systems and methods employing delimiter searches to identify sensitive information in data

Potentially sensitive information (e.g., account numbers for payment cards, etc.) may be identified from data by use of an 'interval scanning' technique, in which a string of data is evaluated in intervals. When a system employs an interval scanning technique, data is evaluated by analyzing bytes of data in periodic sequence (e.g., every thirteenth byte, etc.), while the bytes between the analyzed bytes are initially ignored. If the value of an analyzed byte corresponds to a character of interest (e.g., a decimal numeral or numeric digit (i.e., a character having a value that corresponds to a base-ten, or Arabic, number, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9), etc.), that byte is identified as a 'base byte,' from which a more focused evaluation (e.g., a byte-by-byte analysis, or sequential analysis, etc.) may then commence.

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Orem, UT, United States of America

Nathan K Stocks