Patent ID: 8166071

Claim:
For a data management system that secures access to a plurality of data objects contained in a data hierarchy of an enterprise, a method of securing access to data attributes of the data objects, said method comprising: receiving an identification of one or more data attributes of a first data object to which access is being secured in the data hierarchy, each data attribute corresponding to a set of data values of the first data object; receiving an identification of one or more data attributes of a second data object to which access is being secured in the data hierarchy, each data attribute corresponding to a set of data values of the second data object, wherein the identified data attributes of the first and second objects comprise a set of data attributes with different access permissions; defining a virtual security object from the identified data attributes of the first and second data objects, the virtual security object representing a logical object that allows corresponding identified data attributes from the first and second data objects to be uniformly secured as a group; receiving a set of control permissions for the virtual security object; and applying the set of control permissions that is received for the virtual security object uniformly across the set of data attributes by overriding the different access permissions of the set of data attributes, wherein the set of control permission is used to control access to the data values of the identified data attributes in response to user queries.