Patent ID: 7860888

Claim:
A multiple application authorization process, comprising: receiving requests for authorization at a plurality of applications at run-time from users seeking access to protected resources, independently collecting, at the applications, respective authorization information at run-time from a central repository containing user information, the user information including dynamically variable role data defining generic roles in an organization and to which a user can be assigned, more than one user being assignable to a given generic role in the organization, the user information associating privileges with said generic roles in the organization based on their current respective definitions, and granting access to protected resources based on the authorization information collected at run-time in response to a given request; wherein the central repository contains dynamically variable responsibility data defining generic responsibilities that can be associated with multiple users; wherein the generic roles in the organization can be varied independently of the generic responsibilities and user associations with the generic roles in the organization; wherein the generic responsibilities can be varied independently of the generic roles in the organization and user associations with the generic responsibilities; wherein the receiving requests for authorization at a plurality of applications at run-time from users seeking access to protected resources comprises: receiving a request from one of the users seeking access to an object that is one of the protected resources, the one of the users being assigned to one of the generic roles and one of the generic responsibilities, the one of the generic roles being associated with privileges, the one of the generic responsibilities being associated with privileges; and wherein the granting access to protected resources based on the authorization information collected at run-time in response to a given request comprises: granting access to the protected resource based on the privileges associated with the one of the generic roles, the privileges associated with the one of the generic responsibilities and the object to which the one of the users seeks access.