Patent ID: 8516548

Claim:
A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein, the computer readable program code adapted to be executed to implement a method, the method comprising: storing policy data for a plurality of entities, including: storing first policy data of a first one of the entities, the first one of the entities including a user and the first policy data used for authentication of the user, and storing second policy data of a second one of the entities, the second one of the entities including a role associated with the user used to control access to information; receiving a message from the user for being transmitted in a network to, the message for accessing by the user the information; in response to the receipt of the message, identifying the first policy data of the user and the second policy data of the role; in response to the receipt of the message, merging the first policy data of the user and the second policy data of the role to produce a combined policy; evaluating the combined policy with respect to the received message; determining whether the message is associated with a policy violation, based on the evaluation of the combined policy; rejecting the message when the determination is that the message is associated with the policy-violation; and transmitting the message when the determination is that the message is not associated with the policy violation.