Patent ID: 7219142

Claim:
A method for providing a customer of a computer network the ability to customize policies defined by an administrator, the customization of policies being carried out independently of the administrator, the customer performing the customization of policies in order to receive customized services from the administrator, wherein a policy is a set of policy rules, each of the set of policy rules including a condition part and an action part, the condition part specifying at least one condition to be matched on network traffic, wherein the action part specifying an action to be performed on the network traffic, the method comprising the steps of: a. defining a policy rule by the administrator; b. classifying the policy rule as scoping or non-scoping policy rule by the administrator irrespective of the customer, the scoping policy rule being a policy rule that can be customized by the customer and the non-scoping policy rule being a policy rule that cannot be customized by the customer; c. customizing the policy rule if the policy rule is defined as the scoping policy rule, wherein customizing the policy rule includes defining sub-rules to the policy rule, the sub-rules being policy rules defined within the scope of the policy rule, the scope of the policy rule being defined as the domain of network traffic affected by the action part of the policy rule; and d. generating a rules database on the basis of the customized policy rules, the customized policy rules being enforced by a policy enforcement engine to provide customized services to the customer, wherein the step of generating the rules database comprises the steps of: i. inputting the policy rule; ii. adding the policy rule to the rules database if the policy rule is defined as the non-scoping policy rule; iii. checking if the sub-rules are defined for the policy rule if the policy rule is defined as the scoping policy rule; iv. adding the policy rule to the rules database if the policy rule has no sub-rules; v. modifying the scoping policy rule on the basis of the defined sub-rules if the policy rule has sub-rules; and vi. adding the modified scoping policy rule to the rules database.