Techniques for encrypting short-term data using layered encryption based on difficult to obtain secrets are described herein. Data that will be encrypted is designated as the source data for a first iteration of a layered encryption. An index indicates a data block within a large set of random data. The data block is encrypted and the encrypted data block is combined with the source data for the iteration to produce set of cryptographic data for the current iteration. The set of cryptographic data is used to generate cryptographic key data that is used to encrypt the index and the encrypted index is stored. The set of cryptographic data is then used as the source data for the next iteration.