Patent ID: 7523281

Claim:
An apparatus implemented in hardware which is used for implementing access protection for users of a computer, the said apparatus comprising: (a) a mechanism to support one or more users; (b) a mechanism to support two or more states for each supported user; (c) a user authentication mechanism for user authentication; (d) a mechanism to accept manual action from a user to change the state of the said apparatus corresponding to the said user, wherein the said manual action can be: pressing one or more buttons and/or toggling the position of one or more switches and/or turning a wheel and/or changing one or more jumper positions and/or any other manual action accepted by the said apparatus; (e) a mechanism which allows a device driver of the said apparatus executing in the said computer to read registers or memory locations of the said apparatus to get the identifier of a user who has performed a manual action to change the state of the said user and has been authenticated; (f) a mechanism to accept a command from a device driver of the said apparatus to change the state of the said apparatus corresponding to a user; and (g) a mechanism for changing the state corresponding to the said user to the state requested by the said user by performing manual action.