Patent ID: 7814534

Claim:
A system implementing a security authorization paradigm comprising: memory and a processor; an access control module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor; and an auditing module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor; wherein the access control module is configured to include a semantic framework comprising assertions, authorization queries, and an evaluation algorithm for producing a proof graph comprising dependency relationships between each assertion, wherein the auditing module is configured to include an audit policy that is coupled to the semantic framework of the access control module such that the audit policy is specified using at least a portion of the semantic framework, and wherein each authorization query is a logical English expression comprising facts, conditions, and a logical operator including at least “NOT,” wherein the audit policy comprises audit policy rules including audit trigger rules that specify when auditing is triggered utilizing the semantic framework of the access control module, wherein the semantic framework is at least partially defined by the assertions comprising token assertions and policy assertions, by the authorization queries being respectively associated with resource-specific operations that respectively correspond to access requests, and by the evaluation algorithm that attempts to satisfy a given authorization query in conjunction with an assertion context having token assertions that are authenticated and policy assertions that are related to a given access request, and wherein an audit record includes the proof graph.