Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-30
2001-09-18
Alam, Hosain T. (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C704S010000, C709S228000, C370S338000, C370S349000, C434S350000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06292801
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to device usage reporting systems, and more particularly, to systems for reporting usage of devices coupled to a computer network.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A communication network for an organization is typically comprised of network devices coupled together through a computer network and a PBX switch, telephones, and other voice devices coupled together in a telephone network. Network devices such as firewalls, proxy servers, and web servers, along with some voice devices such as PBXs generate logs representing inbound and outbound computer and telephone network activity, respectively. Within the organization, telephone system managers review voice device generated log reports regarding telephone usage and network administrators use network device generated log reports regarding computer network resource utilization. As a result, system managers and network administrators focus on only a portion of an organization's communication network without knowledge of all of the communication network issues that exist for an organization.
In many organizations abuse and misuse of communication devices cause significant productivity loss. In addition, more mundane tasks such as traffic management, costs allocation, operating efficiency, and disaster avoidance are often overlooked by system managers or network administrators as they handle the surge of issues and problems that arise daily. As communication technology continues to converge, the telephone system manager and network administrator functions also converge. This is particularly the case in organizations that use computer integrated telephony. Computer integrated telephony couples the telephone network to the computer network within an organization to provide data files to desktop computers in conjunction with telephone calls arriving at an associated handset or to permit the exchange of messages between voicemail systems and email systems.
In organizations where the network communication network and the telephone communication network are separated, vigilance regarding the efficient utilization of the company's communication resources is difficult. For example, employees that abuse telephone privileges, especially long distance services, are frequently the same employees who use Internet access to obtain files that are not work related. A computer network manager may become aware of abuse from a network activity monitoring system that tracks Internet access or other computer network activities associated with an employee's computer user identifier. However, the telephone network manager does not have data that correlates the user identifier to any devices on the telephone network. Thus, abusive activity on one network is not readily available for detecting abusive activity on the other network. If information regarding the usage of communication resources for an organization were more integrated, abusive activities on one communication network might lead to the discovery of abuses on another communication network for the organization.
When employees are transferred within an organization, an employee is frequently assigned a new telephone extension and a new computer. When this occurs, both the computer network manager and telephone system manager must separately update their respective records to identify the change in ownership of devices on a network. Such changes include the reassignment of the employee's old telephone extension number and computer user identifier as well as the assignment of a new telephone extension and/or computer user identifier to the employee. The synchronization of these data changes in computer network, telephone network, and organizational data across several databases may result in erroneous allocation of activity from a data device to an employee or other ownership entity. As a consequence, maintaining synchronization of ownership rights to various communication resources within an organization is difficult and problematic.
What is needed is a system and method for integrating data about data devices used on computer and telephone networks of an organization.
What is needed is a system and method for more efficient tracking and synchronization of ownership rights with respect to communication devices on both computer and telephone networks.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The limitations noted with respect to usage and tracking of data resource ownership has been overcome by a system and method made in accordance with the principles of the present invention. The system of the present invention includes a data extractor for extracting data resource communication activity data from a plurality of network activity data sources, a database of organizational data resource ownership data, and a communication activity report generator for correlating extracted data resource communication activity data and organizational data resource ownership data so that ownership of communication activity may be tracked.
The data extractor of the present invention obtains network activity data from a variety of data sources. The data sources include network communication devices such as firewalls, routers and servers and telephone communication devices such as a PBX or other telephone connection router/manager. Network activity data about communication activity may be obtained directly from the data resources initiating the communication activity or from data sources that handle communication activity initiated by a data resource. Methods for obtaining network activity data include interrogation of an application programming interface (API), capture of an output file for a data log generated by the communication device, or reception of a data stream provided by the communication device to some output port on the device. The network activity data are then processed to extract data resource communication activity data. Data resource communication activity data includes communication activity identification data and data resource identification data. This data are preferably stored in a database for later correlation with data resource ownership data although the extraction and correlation may be performed without intermediate storage of the data resource communication activity data.
Preferably, the data extractor has two modes of operation, namely, a test mode and an operational mode. In test mode, the data extractor does not store data resource communication activity data but rather displays the extracted data. This mode permits a system administrator to view the extracted data for a new data source and define a data source template that may later be used to extract data from the network activity data and generate the data resource communication activity data. Once a system administrator confirms the definition of the data source template for a data source, the data extractor may be placed in its operational mode for extracting data from data sources for which data templates have been defined.
Organizational data resource ownership data includes data for identifying the data resources from which communication activity data are extracted and the organizational entities owning the data resources. Typically, these organizational entities include company data, division data, department data, and employee data. This data may then be linked to identify an employee as being associated with a particular department and division within a company. These entities for an organization are merely exemplary and other components of organizational structure may be used. This data contain sufficient information to identify every data resource within an organization and the person associated with operation and utilization of that resource. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the relationship between corporate entities and data resources are implemented with join tables in a relational database, although other types of data repositories and data linking may be used.
The communication activity report generator may be used to generate a response to a directory q
Campbell Rene L.
Jensen Morten S.
Jones Kent H.
Mauro Richard L.
McAbee-Reher Raphael D.
Alam Hosain T.
Alam Shahid
Morris Manning & Martin LLP
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