Patent ID: 7343628
Filing Date: 2008-03-11
Classification: G06F,H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An authorization process, comprising: storing, in a central repository external to an application, dynamically variable role data defining generic roles that can be associated with multiple users; assigning users to said generic roles, more than one user being assignable to a given generic role; altering said role data from time to time to change a definition of a given generic role independently of user associations; associating privileges with said generic roles based on their current respective definitions; receiving requests at run-time from users seeking access to protected resources; in response to a given request from a given user, collecting information about the user's currently defined role and privileges associated with the currently-defined role by querying the central data repository; and dynamically deciding whether the user is authorized to access a given protected resource based on the current variable role data, rather than the user's identity, collected at run-time, the information collected at run-time including the current variable value of a privilege status with respect to the protected resource associated with the currently defined role assigned to the user seeking access.