A policy server program evaluates one or more policy statements based on the group or groups to which a user belongs as well as other conditions. Each policy statement expresses an implementation of the access policy of the network, and is associated with a profile. The profile contains one or more actions that are to be applied to the user. The policy server program determines the identity of the group or groups to which the user belongs by referencing one or more group attributes contained in a user object which is located in a directory on the network. The user object and its group parameters are established when the user is added to the directory, while a policy statement for a group can be created at any time.