Patent ID: 8195815

Claim:
A method comprising: assigning a trust level to each of a plurality of users in a network; setting a monitoring level for each of said plurality of users based on said trust level of the user; monitoring at a network device, traffic associated with each of said plurality of users at the set monitoring levels, wherein monitoring comprises measuring data traffic transmitted between the network device and each of said plurality of users assigned a trust level; analyzing at the network device, the monitored traffic associated with each of said plurality of users, wherein analyzing comprises comparing said measured data traffic to specified network usage parameters; and modifying said trust level of one or more of said plurality of users if the analyzed traffic indicates that the one or more of said plurality of users is operating outside of the specified network usage parameters; wherein modifying said trust level of the user comprises decreasing said trust level and increasing said data traffic measurements if the user operates outside of the specified network usage parameters, and increasing said trust level and reducing said data traffic measurements if the user operates within said specified network usage parameters for a set period of time.