Patent ID: 6983486
Filing Date: 2006-01-03
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method for establishing a list of security scanner attributes for a computing node within a hierarchy of computing nodes, the list of security scanner attributes being associated with a security scanner action to be performed by a security scanner program, the method comprising: establishing a hierarchy of lists of attributes, an attribute being comprised of an attribute identifier and an attribute value, the attribute value being comprised of a list of attributes used by the security scanner program to control an operation of the security scanner program, the list of attributes being comprised of a grouping attribute and a series of one or more attributes; examining the grouping attribute associated with the list of attributes; updating an element of the list of attributes if the grouping attribute indicates that the element may be updated without also updating other elements in the list of attributes; updating the element and all other elements of the list of attributes if the grouping attribute indicates that updating the element requires all other elements to be updated; and updating the element, all other elements, and all subordinate elements of the list of attributes if the grouping attribute indicates that updating the element requires all subordinate elements of the list of attributes to be updated; wherein the grouping attribute is associated with the entire list of attributes for controlling the updating through selection of at least one of at least three scenarios by indicating at least one of: wherein updating the element involves overwriting the value with another value that may be identical to an original value; wherein updating the element and all other elements of the list of attributes involves overwriting each value with another value that may be identical to an original value; wherein updating the element, all other elements in the list of attributes, and all subordinate elements of the list of attributes involves overwriting each value with another value that may be identical to an original value for each element and each subordinate element of the list of attributes; wherein the attribute value includes a second list of attributes used by the security scanner program to control the operation of the security scanner program; wherein the second list of attributes includes a second grouping attribute associated with each of the attributes of the second list; wherein the element of the list of attributes contains an identifier that uniquely identifies the element and a value, wherein the value may itself be a list of elements; wherein the list of security scanner attributes determines the files to be scanned by the security scanner program; wherein the list of security scanner attributes further determines a corrective action to take in response to the identification of an infected file.