Patent Document ID: 8495701
Application ID: 12133850

Base Claim:
1. A computer implemented method for indexing security policies, the computer implemented method comprising: determining, by a computer, a policy vocabulary to form a set of policy elements; creating, by the computer, an index from the set of policy elements, wherein creating the index from the set of policy elements comprises: determining, by the computer, policy element combinations to form determined policy element combinations; assigning, by the computer, a rule number to each distinct policy element combination within the determined policy element combinations to create a set of rules, wherein each rule in the set of rules includes a target portion and a condition portion; removing, by the computer, inequality expressions located in subject entries of the target portion of the set of rules; placing, by the computer, the inequality expressions removed from the target portion into the condition portion of the set of rules; transforming, by the computer, each of the inequality expressions removed from the target portion and placed in the condition portion of the set of rules from a subject entry to an apply entry; responsive to determining that two or more rules having distinct policy element combinations in the set of rules are equivalent, assigning, by the computer, a same rule number to each of the two or more rules having the distinct policy element combinations determined to be equivalent; receiving, by the computer, a request to form requested policy elements; locating, by the computer, requested policy elements in the index to form a set of returned policy elements; and identifying, by the computer, a rule for the set of returned policy elements.

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Claim 3:
3. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein determining whether unique rules are present in the set of rules comprises evaluating, by the computer, each rule in the set of rules with respect to vocabulary element combinations.