US Patent 7540014 Automated policy change alert in a distributed enterprise

A distributed enterprise includes a policy management module and policy library for automating policy change alerting. The policy management module and policy library are configured to list associations between published policies, published policy exceptions, and one or more systems policies, and to determine if changes to published (written) enterprise policies, published policy exceptions, or systems policies have occurred. The policy management module and policy library are also configured to notify personnel of the distributed enterprise so that appropriate actions may be implemented.