Patent ID: 8413229

Claim:
A method for authenticating, by an appliance, a client to access a virtual private network connection, based on an attribute of a client-side certificate, the method comprising the steps of: (a) requesting, by an appliance, a client authentication certificate from a client; (b) identifying, by the appliance, a value of at least one field in the client authentication certificate received from the client, the identified value other than a public key and an identity of a user of the client; and (c) applying, by the appliance, a policy to the identified value of the at least one field in the client authentication certificate received from the client, responsive to authenticating the client via the same client authentication certificate; (d) assigning, by the appliance, one of a plurality of types of access to the authenticated client responsive to the application of the policy to the identified value of the at least one field, each of the plurality of access types characterized by at least one connection characteristic.