Beyond Life: A Digital Will Solution for Posthumous Data Management

TL;DR

This paper presents 'Beyond Life', a cross-platform digital will management system utilizing a novel CP-ABE scheme to securely and transparently manage digital assets posthumously, offering portability and independence from service providers.

Contribution

Introduction of 'Beyond Life', a portable, transparent digital will solution with a new CP-ABE scheme for fine-grained access control, independent of service providers.

Findings

System is fully developed and evaluated for performance.

Provides fine-grained, scalable access control.

Ensures user control and portability of digital wills.

Abstract

In the digital era, managing posthumous data presents a growing challenge, with current technical solutions often falling short in practicality. Existing tools are typically closed-source, lack transparency, fail to offer cross-platform support, and provide limited access control. This paper introduces `Beyond Life', a cross-platform digital will management solution designed to securely handle and distribute digital assets after death. At the core of this solution is a customized Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) scheme, referred to as PD-CP-ABE, which enables efficient, fine-grained control over access to will content at scale. Unlike existing systems, Beyond Life operates independently of service providers, offering users greater transparency and control over how their will is generated, stored, and executed. The system is also designed to be portable, allowing users to change their will service provider. The proposed system has been fully developed and rigorously evaluated to ensure performance and real-world feasibility. The system implementation is made publicly available.