Apparatus and method to automatically collect data regarding...

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing

Reexamination Certificate

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

C709S224000, C709S250000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06988134

ABSTRACT:
A system to automatically gather attribute data about elements such as networks, network interface cards, operating systems, device types, installed software, processes in execution, financial data, etc. in an organization or a designated subset of the organization. Fingerprint files are used, each fingerprint file corresponding to an element of a specific type and each containing a list of attributes that will be found if that element exists in the system. Each fingerprint contains or points to one or more collection instructions which control a data collector process to attempt to gather attribute data. Each fingerprint contains or points to rules that are used to analyze the attribute data gathered to calculate the probability that the element exists. The rules can be fired sequentially, in if-then-else fashion or can be incorporated in a script in loops and with mathematical manipulations, tests and branching for more sophisticated analysis. Fingerprints can be turned on and off by configuration data and can be used in a logical order to do discovery without any prior knowledge of the systems being analyzed. A refresh schedule and collection calendar control how often the fingerprints are used in some embodiments, and collected data is stored with time stamps to enable analysis of changes in the data over time.

REFERENCES:
patent: 5805819 (1998-09-01), Chin et al.
patent: 6336138 (2002-01-01), Caswell et al.
patent: 6347336 (2002-02-01), Song et al.
patent: 6574662 (2003-06-01), Sugiyama et al.
patent: 6633834 (2003-10-01), Conrad et al.
patent: 6834304 (2004-12-01), Nisbet et al.
patent: 6845393 (2005-01-01), Murphy et al.
patent: 6920492 (2005-07-01), Richard

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for the USA inventors and patents. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Apparatus and method to automatically collect data regarding... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Apparatus and method to automatically collect data regarding..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Apparatus and method to automatically collect data regarding... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3533051

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.