CENTRALIZED SECURE BACKUP SYSTEM AND METHOD

Briefly, a centralized secure data backup system pulls information to be securely backed-up from one or more data sources such as computer nodes or other communication units. A processor or other suitable processor centrally initiates extraction of data to be backed-up from a plurality of processing nodes. The processor employs a backup data encryptor that encrypts the centrally extracted data using a public key based cryptographic system. Data is encrypted using a suitable symmetric key and symmetric cryptosystem. Then the symmetric key is wrapped using the public encryption key of the data source, such as a user, organization administrator, software application or other entity.