Patent ID: 8544057

Claim:
A method of providing an IT policy to configure a plurality of devices associated with a group of users, the IT policy comprising a set of rules that dictate the functionality of the plurality of devices, wherein the IT policy comprises IT policy data that is customizable on a per-user basis, the method being implemented by a processor at a server and the method comprises: checking for a change made to a global IT policy; noting a first group of users for which the change in the global IT policy applies; checking for at least one special user in the first group of users that have per-user IT policy rules; generating global IT policy data based on settings in a first data structure associated with global IT policy rules that are applicable to all users within the group of users; generating per-user IT policy data based on settings in a second data structure associated with the per-user IT policy rules that are applicable to the at least one special user within the group of users; generating merged IT policy data for the at least one special user by merging the global IT policy data and the per-user IT policy data, the merged IT policy data being generated before being sent to the at least one special user; and sending the merged IT policy data to the at least one special user within the group, wherein the processor at the server is configured to define at least one of the global IT policy rules and the per-user IT policy rules to specify at least one of maximum storage size and maximum storage time for electronic messages stored on the devices based on at least one keyword used in the subject line of the electronic messages, the at least one keyword corresponding to a message type comprising at least one of personal, corporate, customer, sensitive and confidential messages.