Dynamic determination of access rights

A system for dynamically determining the access rights to a record comprising:

• a license server arranged to store a rights policy for the record, the rights policy defining a plurality of different rights with respect to the record, each with a respective minimum score,
• a component arranged to receive an access request with respect to the record, and
• a context evaluator arranged to determine one or more contexts relating to the access request, to calculate a score for each determined context wherein the context score is selectable from a plurality of context scores for each context, to calculate an overall score from the context scores, to access the rights policy for the record, and to determine the access rights according to a comparison of the overall score to the score for each right in the rights policy;
• wherein the license server accesses an audit log defining at least one of prior reputation and prior behavior for a client and minimizes the rights policy according to the audit log;
• wherein the context evaluator dynamically provides rights access based on the comparison of the overall score to the score for each right in the rights policy, a subset of rights comprising one or more of the full set of rights being granted if a score for a given right in the rights policy is below the overall score;
• and
• wherein the context evaluator is arranged, when determining one or more contexts relating to the access request, to select one or more contexts of authentication level, trustworthiness of client and access time of day indicative of whether the access request is urgent.

A method of dynamically determining the access rights to a record comprising:

• receiving an access request from a client with respect to the record,
• determining one or more contexts relating to the access request,
• calculating a context score for each determined context, the context score being selected from a plurality of context scores for each context;
• calculating an overall score from the context scores,
• accessing a rights policy for the record, the rights policy defining a plurality of different rights with respect to the record, each with a respective minimum score;
• determining the access rights according to a comparison of the overall score to the score for each right in the rights policy;
• and
• transmitting a message to the client, the message describing the client's access rights, which include at least one granted access right;
• and
• dynamically providing access rights as a function of the overall score and the individual context scores, a subset of rights comprising one or more of the full set of rights being granted if the level of trust is below a predetermined threshold;
• wherein determining one or more contexts relating to the access request comprises selecting contexts of authentication level, trustworthiness of client and access time of day indicative of whether the access request is urgent.