Patent ID: 7543331

Claim:
A computing environment, comprising: an operating system; a virtual machine operating on said operating system; a first application operating on said virtual machine; a second application operating on said virtual machine; a first firewall control block, wherein said first firewall control block defines access privileges of said first application with respect to said second application, and further defines the access privileges of said second application with respect to said first application; and a second firewall control block, wherein said second firewall control block defines access privileges of said second application with respect to said first application, and further defines the access privileges of said first application with respect to said second application, wherein said first firewall control block and the second firewall control block each includes a firewall control value and a firewall control indicator, the firewall control value including an application identifier data having a resource identifier and a proprietary identifier extension, the firewall control indicator being an indicator value represented by one or more bytes that indicate how the firewall control value should be interpreted with respect to access privileges of other applications, and wherein when said firewall control indicator of said first firewall control block has a first indicator value, said first firewall control block compares said proprietary identifier extension of said first firewall control block to said proprietary identifier extension of said second firewall control block, and when said firewall control indicator of said first firewall control block has a second indicator value, said first firewall control block compares said proprietary identifier extension and resource identifier of said first firewall control block to said proprietary identifier extension and resource identifier of said second firewall control block.