Patent ID: 8438610

Claim:
A machine-implemented method residing in a non-transitory machine-readable medium and to execute on a machine, comprising: receiving, by the machine, an electronic address for accessing a resource, the electronic address is received from a principal for purposes of gaining access to the resource; resolving, by the machine, a resource identity for the resource and a principal identity for the principal; determining, by the machine, a set of patterns that the electronic address can be represented as based on the resource identity and the principal identity, the set of patterns are identity-based and determined based on the resource identity and the principal identity, and the set of patterns include constant and hard coded information along with variable and regular expression information, one or more of said patterns being dynamically defined in real time; attempting, by the machine, to match the electronic address against the set of patterns when policy dictates; normalizing, by the machine, the electronic address in response to a matched pattern into a normalized address, the normalized address is to a location for the principal to retrieve the resource based on the principal identity and the resource identity; querying the address pattern repository using the principal identity for the principal and the resource identity for the resource; and enforcing, by the machine, one or more actions against the principal before directing the principal to the resource for access in response to the normalized address, the normalized address permits designated services to process the one or more actions before the principal accesses the resource via the location identified in the normalized address and the designated services customized based on the principal identity and the resource identity and the one or more actions affect security to access the resource, auditing with respect to accessing the resource, and load balancing for the resource when the resource is accessed at the location.