Patent ID: 8307415

Claim:
A method of securing network communications between a source computer and a destination computer, said source computer and said destination computer having a firewall therebetween, said method comprising: constructing a remote endpoint as function of the data included in an outbound request, said outbound request originating at a local endpoint of the source computer and being sent to a remote endpoint of the destination computer; determining a local physical memory address associated with a local endpoint included in the outbound request, said local physical memory address unique to the local endpoint and unknown to the remote endpoint; hashing, by the firewall, the remote endpoint and the local physical memory address to generate a single outbound index value; indexing into an entry in an internal state table of the firewall, said internal state table comprising an application level enforcement (ALE) state table and said entry in the internal state table uniquely corresponding to the outbound index value, said internal state table not storing the local physical memory address; and storing the remote endpoint in the internal state table at the indexed entry corresponding to the outbound index value.