Patent ID: 8214481

Claim:
A method, comprising: at a network appliance comprising a firewall, a policy engine, and a database, monitoring traffic external to a network to identify a request to authenticate from a requestor seeking access to the network; upon identifying the request to authenticate, performing an identity authentication procedure to validate an identity of the access requestor as one having permission to access the network, the authentication procedure comprising: comparing the access requestor identity with one or more rules and/or one or more data structures stored on the appliance and/or the network; and based upon the comparison between the access requestor's identity and the one or more rules and/or the one or more data structures, determining a permissible scope of access to various devices, applications, and databases on the network that the access requestor may be granted; and granting to the access requestor direct access to a permissible portion of the network within the permissible scope of access.