Theft of data is a problem that has long existed in data processing environments and continues to be a problem currently. Control of access to data has been an approach attempting to mitigate theft of data.
There are existing closed-system security approaches for controlling access of data that allow access of data only through a fixed list of proprietary software, but the existing closed-system security approaches do not offer sufficient configurability.
Systems of the existing art often allow access through applications which an administrator may want disabled for security reasons, but do not provide high-performance access for applications from a different vendor which the administrator would want to certify for high performance.
Another kind of access limitation in the existing art is the disabling of some communication mechanisms (e.g., USB ports) to discourage abuse.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds