Patents by Inventor Spence Minear

Spence Minear has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Secure firewall supporting different levels of authentication based on address or encryption status
    Patent number: 5983350
    Abstract: A system and method for regulating the flow of messages through a firewall having a network protocol stack, wherein the network protocol stack includes an Internet Protocol (IP) layer, the method comprising establishing a security policy, determining, at the IP layer, if a message is encrypted, if the message is not encrypted, passing the unencrypted message up the network protocol stack to an application level proxy, and if the message is encrypted, decrypting the message and passing the decrypted message up the network protocol stack to the application level proxy, wherein decrypting the message includes executing a process at the IP layer to decrypt the message.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 18, 1996
    Date of Patent: November 9, 1999
    Assignee: Secure Computing Corporation
    Inventors: Spence Minear, Edward B. Stockwell, Troy de Jongh