13. A computer program product for indexing security policies, the computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon, the computer-executable instructions comprising: computer-executable instructions for determining a policy vocabulary to form a set of policy elements; computer-executable instructions for creating an index from the set of policy elements, wherein creating the index from the set of policy elements comprises: determining policy element combinations to form determined policy element combinations; assigning a rule number to each distinct policy element combination within the determined policy element combinations to create a set of rules, wherein each rule in the set of rules includes a target portion and a condition portion; removing inequality expressions located in subject entries of the target portion of the set of rules; placing the inequality expressions removed from the target portion into the condition portion of the set of rules; transforming each of the inequality expressions removed from the target portion and placed in the condition portion of the set of rules from a subject entry to an apply entry; responsive to determining that two or more rules having distinct policy element combinations in the set of rules are equivalent, assigning a same rule number to each of the two or more rules having the distinct policy element combinations determined to be equivalent; computer-executable instructions for receiving a request to form requested policy elements; computer-executable instructions for locating requested policy elements in the index to form a set of returned policy elements; and computer-executable instructions for identifying a rule for the set of returned policy elements.
16. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the index comprises a key portion and a rule number portion, and wherein each key portion comprises a distinct policy element combination.