Patent ID: 7047288

Claim:
A method for allowing comprehension of a network security policy specification for a network by generating a human language representation of said policy, said specification having a text representation, said method comprising: loading said text representation of said policy specification into a parser; said parser looping through all protocols, wherein said looped protocols are supported in said policy specification, said supported protocols having actions, and said supported protocols having associated rules: for each supported protocol, sorting said rules in order of rank: looping in ranked order through said sorted rules: for each rule, generating a text description of said each rule using an algorithm; and if said text description not first generated text description, then appending said text description to a collection of already generated descriptions, else, creating said collection of already generated descriptions with said text description; wherein said algorithm comprising: outputting a name of said each rule; outputting a name of an agent, wherein said agent is a network, monitor on said network; looping through all combinations of said protocol and said actions; for each action, if said action is ignored, then applying said each rule to an entirety of said protocol, else applying said each rule to some or all of said actions; evaluating an immediate outcome of said each rule; outputting a first disposition corresponding to said immediate outcome; outputting conditions on said first disposition, if any said conditions exist; evaluating a final outcome of said each rule; outputting a second disposition corresponding to said final outcome; outputting conditions on said second disposition, if any said conditions exist; if said each rule applies to a target and/or initiator, outputting name(s) of said target and/or initiator, else outputting a term representing any entity; and outputting prerequisites, if any exist.