Analyzing usage information of an information management system

摘要

In an information management system, activity data is collected and analyzed for patterns. The information management system may be policy based. Activity data may be organized as entries including information on user, application, machine, action, object or document, time, and location. When checking for patterns in the activity or historical data, techniques may include inferencing, frequency checking, location and distance checking, and relationship checking, and any combination of these. Analyzing the activity data may include comparing like types or categories of information for two or more entries.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
providing a plurality of policies stored at a server, wherein the policies are applicable to a plurality of target profiles, each target profile having a set of target attributes, wherein each policy comprises a code component comprising a conditional expression having a policy abstraction and a corresponding action that will be performed when the conditional expression is satisfied, and each policy abstraction has a corresponding definition statement stored separately from the policy; at the server, analyzing a first policy of the plurality of policies to determine whether the first policy is relevant or irrelevant to a first specific target profile with a first set of specific target attributes without inspecting a first code component of the first policy; at the server, upon determining the first policy is relevant to the first specific target profile, inspecting the first code component of the first policy, otherwise when the first policy is determined not to be relevant to the first specific target profile, not inspecting the first code component of the first policy; at the server, when the first policy is determined to be relevant to the first specific target profile, based upon the inspecting of the first code component of the first policy, altering the first code component of the first policy to obtain a modified first code component of the first policy; when the first policy is determined to be relevant to the first specific target profile, transferring the first policy to a first specific target with the first specific target profile by transferring the modified first code component, not the first code component, to the first specific target; determining the first policy comprises a first policy abstraction and the first policy abstraction is defined by a first definition statement stored separately from the first policy; retrieving the first definition statement to be used when evaluating the first policy; and transferring the first definition statement to the first specific target to be used when evaluating the first policy.