Patent ID: 8151323

Claim:
A method of controlling by an appliance an action performed by a client on a resource accessed via a virtual private network connection provided by the appliance to a network, the method comprising: (a) receiving, by an appliance, a request from a client operated by a user to perform an action on a resource on a network being accessed via a secure socket layer virtual private network (SSL VPN) connection provided by the appliance to the network, the client comprising a computing environment, the action comprising one of printing, editing or saving the resource via the SSL VPN connection; (b) receiving, by the appliance, characteristics of the computing environment provided by a collection agent; (c) providing, by a policy engine of the appliance, one or more policies for controlling actions by the computing environment; and (d) controlling, by the appliance via the SSL VPN connection, whether the computing environment is allowed to perform the requested action on the resource based on application of the one or more policies on the received characteristics and the requested action.