Patent ID: 7607572
Filing Date: 2009-10-27
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for formalizing, diffusing and enforcing policy advisories and for monitoring policy compliance in the management of networks of computational devices, comprising: a unified management interface; a plurality of distributed clients, each of which runs on a corresponding networked computational device, wherein each of said distributed clients determines relevance of an advice message by evaluating a relevance clause of said advice message, while automatically retrieving properties of a computational device on which said distributed client runs; a central server coupled to a central database, said central server for coordinating relay of information to and from individual computational devices, storing and retrieving information about individual computational devices and presenting information to a system administrator via said unified management interface, said central server comprising: at least one advice server providing a plurality of advisories directly to said distributed clients; a protocol for diffusing queries across the network; wherein said management interface conveys reports to said administrator received from said distributed clients via said central server; and wherein said advisories formally target specific states of a computational device and formally specify actions to take in response thereto.