Patent ID: 8341104

Claim:
A method comprising; authenticating a user against an enterprise wide system; retrieving content from a data source in response to a request, wherein the request is submitted from a browser application; determining if a policy associated with the user exists locally; if the policy does not exist locally, setting a dummy time stamp and comparing the dummy time stamp to a time stamp of the policy within a policy store if the policy exists within the policy store; or, if the policy does exist locally, determining a time stamp of the existing policy and comparing the time stamp of the existing local policy to the time stamp of the policy within a policy store if the policy exists within the policy store, the policy including one or more rules for masking data; if the policy exists in the policy store, determining whether the either the dummy time stamp or the time stamp of the existing local policy is identical to the time stamp of the policy in the policy store; if the time stamps are not identical, retrieving the latest policy from the policy store; otherwise using the existing policy; searching, within the content, data in accordance with the latest policy, wherein the data satisfy the one or more rules; determining whether the user is white-listed; if the user is not white-listed, masking the data that satisfy the one or more rules; modifying the content with the masked data; and if no policy exists in the policy store, or if the user is white-listed, sending the retrieved content from the data source to the browser application without masking the data.