System and method for the automatic evaluation of existing security policies and automatic creation of new security policies

Abstract

The present invention relates to methodologies for combining policy analysis and static analysis of code and thereafter determining whether the permissions granted by the policy to the code and to the subjects executing it are appropriate. In particular, this involves the verification that too many permissions have not been granted (wherein this would be a violation of the Principle of Least Privilege), and that the permissions being granted are sufficient to execute the code without run-time authorization failures, thus resulting in the failure of the program to execute.