Patent ID: 8201234

Claim:
A method of controlling network security for a computing device, said method comprising: defining one or more parameters included in a network security rule for managing communications between the computing device and at least one other computing device via a data communications network, said network security rule expressing a multi-profile security policy including a connection security rule and a firewall rule, the firewall rule comprising an action parameter, a traffic direction parameter, a security level parameter, and a remote user identification parameter; specifying one or more restrictions to each of the one or more parameters, said specified one or more restrictions identifying limiting values for each of the one or more parameters; validating the network security rule, further comprising: evaluating the parameters and the limiting values for each of the one or more parameters; determining the action parameter corresponds to bypass; validating the traffic direction parameter corresponds to incoming traffic; validating the remote user identification parameter is present and contains a non- NULL value; and validating the security level parameter is present and corresponds to either Authenticate or AuthenticateEncrypt; executing the network security rule; and examining the communications as a function of the network security rule for managing the communications from and to the computing device.