Abstract: Techniques for managing access to digital assets via a designated place or its sub-places are disclosed. The designated place may be a file folder, a directory, a local or remote store. The designated place is characterized by or associated with a securing module that causes all files stored in the designated place to have substantially similar security. In other words, a file to be secured can be simply dropped into the designated place and the securing module is configured to take actions to secure the file transparently in accordance with the security characteristics of the designated place. Likewise, a designated place can be set up to unsecure the secured files being deposited in the designated place, provided a user of the secured files is permitted to do so.

Abstract: To grant or deny access rights to a user attempting to access a protected system or secured electronic data, an access right evaluation process is carried out among all applicable policies including those embedded in the secured electronic data. In a preferred embodiment, the access right evaluation process is invoked only when a system being accessed is protected or a file being accessed is detected to be in a secured format. Further, the access right evaluation process is configured preferably to operate transparently to the user. The access right evaluation may be advantageously used in systems or applications in which devices, mediums or electronic data are secured and can be restrictively accessed by those who are authenticated and have proper access privilege.

Abstract: Techniques for providing pervasive security to digital assets are disclosed. According to one aspect of the techniques, a server is configured to provide access control (AC) management for a user (e.g., a single user, a group of users, software agents or devices) with a need to access secured data. Within the server module, various access rules for the secured data and/or access privileges for the user can be created, updated and managed so that the user with the proper access privileges can access the secured documents if granted by the corresponding access rules in the secured data.