Patent ID: 8245280

Claim:
A system for managing user access control for a plurality of heterogeneous devices in a home network, the system comprising: a plurality of heterogeneous devices each including a device-specific access control list policy, a security aware authorization agent, an operating system specific access control list policy; wherein each device-specific access control list policy describes content ownership information and content accessibility information; and a processor and an associated memory storing computer program code which when executed implements a controller that performs the steps of: aggregating device-specific access control list policies of the plurality of heterogeneous devices in the home network into a consistent unified network wide access control list policy; mapping said unified network wide access control list policy to a device-specific access control list policy for device-specific users and user groups for each heterogeneous device including mapping said unified network wide access control list policy to the operating system (OS)-specific access control list policy for device-specific users and user groups for each device; managing the plurality of heterogeneous devices using the unified network wide access control list policy in each device; controlling access to each heterogeneous device using the unified network wide access control list policy by checking for user authorization to access a selected device using the unified network wide access control list policy for authenticating a user over heterogeneous devices in the home network, without utilizing a centralized server for the home network; accepting changes to the unified network wide access control list policy in the home network; and propagating the changes to the unified network wide access control list policy to each heterogeneous device that is affected by the changes in the unified network wide access control list policy; and storing the changes to the unified network wide access control list policy in a distributed manner on each device; wherein propagating the changes to the unified network wide access control list policy to each heterogeneous device using a device-specific synchronization protocol.