Patent ID: 8380841

Claim:
A method implemented by a computer machine for scalably investigating a security status of a data processing environment, the data processing environment including a collection of components, the method comprising: receiving access data that reflects historical access to at least one component in the data processing environment by at least one accessing entity; receiving rights data that reflects rights possessed by at least one access-entitled entity, the rights entitling the at least one access-entitled entity to perform acts including: accessing plural components of the collection of components within the data processing environment; and conferring a subset of the rights to one or more accessing entities; investigating, via the computer machine, the security status of the data processing environment based on the access data and the rights data; identifying, based on the investigating: an extent to which obtained rights to one or more components of a first part of the data processing environment can be used to compromise one or more components of a second part of the data processing environment based at least in part on the accessing and the conferring; and the one or more components of the second part of the data processing environment; and providing an output which reflects an outcome of the identifying.