Protecting data owned by an operating system in a multi-operating system mobile environment

A computer program product, comprising:

• a computer-readable storage device;
• and
• a computer-readable program code stored in the computer-readable storage device, the computer-readable program code containing instructions that are carried out by a central processing unit (CPU) of a computer system to implement a method of protecting data owned by an operating system on a mobile computing device having multiple operating systems, the method comprising the steps of:
• the computer system generating a map specifying protected data regions for the operating systems on the mobile computing device;
• the computer system securing at least a portion of the map with a shared key;
• based at least in part on the map and the shared key, and in response to a data cleanup activity being performed by a software utility being executed on another, currently running operating system included in the multiple operating systems, the computer system determining a data region included in the protected data regions is owned by the operating system;
• based on the data region being owned by the operating system and the data region being specified by the map, the computer system blocking the data cleanup activity from being performed on the data region owned by the operating system;
• the computer system obtaining a user identifier from a user of the mobile computing device;
• based on the user identifier, the computer system retrieving the shared key from a data structure in an internal memory of the mobile computing device;
• and
• based on the retrieved shared key, the computer system retrieving from the data structure a tuple specifying the data region, wherein the step of determining the data region is owned by the operating system is based in part on the shared key being retrieved from the data structure and the tuple specifying the data region being retrieved from the data structure.

A computer system comprising:

• a central processing unit (CPU);
• a memory coupled to the CPU;
• and
• a computer readable storage device coupled to the CPU, the storage device containing instructions that are executed by the CPU via the memory to implement a method of protecting data owned by an operating system on a mobile computing device having multiple operating systems, the method comprising the steps of:
• the computer system generating a map specifying protected data regions for the operating systems on the mobile computing device;
• the computer system securing at least a portion of the map with a shared key;
• based at least in part on the map and the shared key, and in response to a data cleanup activity being performed by a software utility being executed on another, currently running operating system included in the multiple operating systems, the computer system determining a data region included in the protected data regions is owned by the operating system;
• based on the data region being owned by the operating system and the data region being specified by the map, the computer system blocking the data cleanup activity from being performed on the data region owned by the operating system;
• the computer system obtaining a user identifier from a user of the mobile computing device;
• based on the user identifier, the computer system retrieving the shared key from a data structure in an internal memory of the mobile computing device;
• and
• based on the retrieved shared key, the computer system retrieving from the data structure a tuple specifying the data region, wherein the step of determining the data region is owned by the operating system is based in part on the shared key being retrieved from the data structure and the tuple specifying the data region being retrieved from the data structure.