An ideal policy-based network would operate in the following manner:

Policies would exist that define trust and authority requirements for access to and use of network-based resources.

The authority and trust of each user would be maintained in an authoritative directory.

A user would have to authenticate his identity to gain use of the network.

At the time of user authentication, the state of the userâ??s computer would be assessed against established software security policies.

Depending on your identity, system profile and the resulting trust, the network would provide suitably connectivity.

After the initial connection, if anything changed a policy driven network would automatically reconfigure to reflect the modified access appropriately.