Patent ID: 7380271

Claim:
A method for extending and grouping actions and permissions for authorization of a requesting user to access or use a requested protected system resource in a computer system, said method comprising the steps of: providing in a computer readable medium an access control policy associated with said requested protected system resource containing a permission list of permitted identities and at least one action group tag with associated action indicators; reusing a finite quantity of action indicators among a plurality of action group tags to control a number of unique permissions less than or equal to the product of the quantity of allowable action indicators and a quantity of allowable action group tags; evaluating said permission list according to a specific permission definition associated with said action group tag, said permission definition providing a correlation between permissible actions and members of a set of action indicators; and granting to a requesting computer or program authorization to perform actions on said requested protected system resource to said requesting user if said access control policy permission list includes an appropriate action indicator correlated to an action group tag.