Distributed policy model for access control

A method comprising:

• creating an enterprise policy object providing an enterprise-wide policy governing resource access of a plurality of nodes within a networking environment organized within a plurality of arrays;
• creating at least one array policy object, each array policy object providing an array-wide policy governing resource access for one or more of the plurality of nodes organized within a corresponding array;
• for each array policy object, inheriting an instance of the enterprise-wide policy as the array-wide policy such that the array-wide policy of each array policy object is initially set to the enterprise-wide policy, wherein inheriting the instance of the enterprise-wide policy as the array-wide policy comprises copying instance properties of the enterprise-wide policy to instance properties of the array-wide policy;
• and,
• for each one or more of the at least one array policy object, adjusting the array-wide policy after the array-wide policy has inherited the enterprise-wide policy.