Patent ID: 8032557
Filing Date: 2011-10-04
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method managing policy compliance across an infrastructure includes the steps of: maintaining a policy-aware configuration management database comprising a topology of policy-aware objects, the topology defining structural and behavioral relationships of the policy aware objects, wherein the policy aware objects are associated with models of managed elements, wherein the managed elements are IT components, wherein the topology spans multiple domains indicating the relationships between managed elements and wherein information is exchanged between the policy aware objects in different domains by propagation through the topology by leveraging the defined structural and behavioral relationships; wherein the configuration management database enables policy management in a infrastructure domain, a security domain, and an information domain; wherein at least one policy is applied to the information domain from a group of policies consisting of industry regulation aspects, content management policies and process management policies; wherein at least one policy is applied to the security domain of a group of policies consisting of ensuring that data can only be accessed by authorized managed objects, authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) policies, and key access policies; wherein at least one policy is applied to the infrastructure domain of the group of policies consisting of performance of services delivered by the information infrastructure such as Quality of Service (QoS) policies, Service Level Agreement (SLA) policies and redundancy requirement policies; managing policies across the infrastructure at a plurality of stages of policy and infrastructure maturity using the topology of policy-aware objects, wherein the plurality of stages of policy and infrastructure maturity are associated with changes in state of at least one of the infrastructure, policies of the infrastructure and compliance of the infrastructure.