Methods and systems for providing access control to secured data

A method for decrypting a secure electronic document, the method comprising:

• identifying an electronic document to be unsecured for access by a requestor;
• determining a particular electronic document data type of the electronic document, wherein the electronic document and the electronic document data type are associated with an application;
• determining whether the requestor has permission to access the particular electronic document data type of the electronic document;
• obtaining a data type key associated with the electronic document data type when the determining determines that the requestor has permission to access electronic documents having the particular electronic document data type, wherein at least a data portion of the electronic document has been encrypted using the data type key according to a public key encryption algorithm, and wherein the encrypted electronic document is in a format accessible by the application;
• decrypting at least the data portion of the electronic document using at least the data type key upon determining that the requester has permission to access the particular electronic document data type of the electronic document;
• and
• providing at least the unencrypted data portion to the requestor.

A computer program product embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer program logic recorded thereon enabling a hardware processor to secure an electronic document, said computer program code comprising:

• computer program code enabling a processor to obtain an electronic document to be secured;
• computer program code enabling the processor to determine a particular electronic document data type corresponding to the electronic document, wherein the electronic document and the electronic document data type are associated with an application;
• computer program code enabling the processor to obtain a data type key associated with the electronic document data type that has been determined;
• computer program code enabling the processor to encrypt at least a data portion of the electronic document using the data type key according to a public key encryption algorithm;
• computer program code enabling the processor to produce an encrypted document corresponding to the electronic document and store the encrypted document in an existing database, wherein the encrypted document is associated with the application and is in a format accessible by the application;
• wherein the data portion of the electronic document can be decrypted using the data type key upon determining that a requester has permission to access the particular electronic document data type of the electronic document.