Patent ID: 7447782

Claim:
A method of community access control in a Multi-Community Node (MCN), said method comprising: receiving a request for access to an object; consulting a community information base (CIB) responsive to said request, wherein said CIB includes: a user community set (UCS) for each user of said MCN, wherein for a given user and associated UCS, a given community is a member of the UCS if the given user is a member of the given community; an application community set (ACS) for each application on said MCN, wherein for a given application and associated ACS, a given community is a member of the ACS if the given application runs on behalf of a user in the given community; and an object community set (OCS) for each object residing within said MCN, wherein each OCS is included in an ACS of a process which created it; permitting access to said object in response to detecting: said request is from a first user; and a UCS of the first user is a superset of an OCS of said object; denying access to said object in response to detecting: said request is from the first user; and a UCS of the first user is not a superset of an OCS of said object; permitting access to said object in response to detecting: said request is from a process; and an ACS of said process is a superset of an OCS of said object; and denying access to said object in response to detecting: said request is from said process; and an ACS of said process is not a superset of an OCS of said object; wherein a given OCS comprises a first set of communities, a given UCS is a superset of the given OCS if at least all of the first set of communities are also included in the given UCS, and a given ACS is a superset of the given OCS if at least all of the first set of communities are also included in the given ACS.