Method for preventing monitoring of data remotely sent from a metering accounting vault to digital printer

Abstract

The method for preventing monitoring of postage indicia data which is sent from a postage metering vault to a remotely located digital printer over a communication link between the meter vault and the digital printer. The meter is provided with an encryption engine for encrypting postage indicia data utilizing a encryption key. The digital printer includes a decryption engine for decrypting postage data received from said meter utilizing the same encryption key and then prints a postage indicia pursuant to the decrypted postage indicia data. The postage meter also includes a key manager for generating a new encryption key pursuant to a token which is either randomly generated or generated pursuant to an algorithm by a similar encryption key manager located in the digital printer which token is also used to generate the decryption key for the decryption engine. As a result, the encryption keys are the same.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.