Faculty Spotlight: Protecting Applications

In the corporate world, protecting information in confidential documents is a top priority, said Hari Kalva, Ph.D., associate chair and professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Now, he’s created and patented a way to safely share that sensitive data.

Designed to ensure privacy when sharing information online, Kalva developed a solution for companies that use PDFs or applications like Outlook and Snapchat.

“This fills the gaps in protecting the privacy in online sharing. It puts the trust back into companies who’ve had their private information fall into the wrong hands,” he said.

The patented methods enhance the privacy on shared emails, documents or images. When receivers are sent information, multiple methods of identification can be applied to ensure only the intended audience views what was sent, Kalva said.

“Imagine if I sent you a selfie on Snapchat, with this invention, I can add restrictions that limit the persons who can see the selfie,” he said.

Applications based on this patent, Kalva said, require access to a sender’s camera, location and microphone. When users send information, it not only determines and restricts the amount of people who can view the document using the camera and microphone, but other methods of security can be added such as being in a specific location, using voice recognition, facial recognition, object detection, biometrics and creating a timeframe for how long the document is opened.

If users are uncomfortable with sharing camera, location or microphone access, Kalva said this invention offers receivers the option to send a request to minimize the restrictions or explain why the lack of security is needed. The sender can either decline or accept the request.

“Since this patent uses situational awareness and the receiver’s viewing environment, users can add just about any restrictions they desire and the system will continuously work to see if those restrictions are satisfied, even when using incognito mode on a computer,” he said.

Kalva’s research in secure methods for internet privacy began in 2007 with his work on reversible video redaction for privacy in surveillance video.

The idea for his current patent sparked when his students talked about privacy issues using social media. That’s when he and his co-inventor developed this patent that keeps users in control of the information.

“When we started exploring this outlet, we realized it could be used for more than just social media, including the corporate world where more classified documents were being jeopardized due to the limitations of current software solutions,” he said.