Mechanism for allowing access to unsecured resources via a security engine using inverted security policies

摘要

A system provides a number of resources, some of which are subjected to security policies and some of which are not. For secured resources a policy specifying how the resource may be used and by whom is drawn up as usual B(Fig. 4a)./B The system then creates a complementary policy which specifies that all users can use the resource B(Fig. 4b)./B For unsecured resources no security policies are created. When access to a resource is requested B302/B the normal policy is checked in the normal fashion B304/B and access allowed B306/B or denied as usual. If usual access is denied then the complementary policy is checked B310,/B however the result of this check is inverted. That is, where a policy allows blanket access the access is denied B314/B. Whereas where there is no access policy the access is allowed B312./B In this fashion access to the unsecured resources with no security policies is facilitated B(Fig. 4c)./B