1. A computer-implemented method of improving performance for a secure search, comprising: generating indexing information for a document of a plurality of documents, the indexing information comprising information about content of the document and information about security access requirements for accessing the document; wherein the information about security access requirements comprises a set of document authorization attributes; wherein the set of document authorization attributes comprises an access control list, and the access control list comprises one or more access control list entries; wherein each document of the plurality of documents is associated with at least one application of a plurality of applications, wherein the at least one application provides access to said each document when the security access requirements are met; storing in an index, the indexing information generated for the document; receiving a set of user identity attributes and a query on behalf of a user, the query including a set of search keywords; wherein an identity management system is used to determine the set of user identity attributes; in response to the query, using the index to identify a set of identified documents, wherein for each document in the set of identified documents: a) the information about the content of said each document includes one or more keywords of the set of search keywords; and b) the user identity attributes meet the security access requirements; wherein said each identified document is determined to be accessible to the user based on the set of document authorization attributes stored in the index without further contacting said at least one application that provides secure access to said each identified document; returning search results based on the set of identified documents; wherein the search results are returned in rank order based on the relevance of each search result to the query.