Patent ID: 7533416

Claim:
A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions which when executed perform steps comprising: on a computer system, determining a baseline level of protection for each of a plurality of types of security applications; generating a schema for each of the baseline levels, wherein each schema is used by corresponding types of security applications to update fields of data stored in a repository, the fields of data representing the protection that a security application that runs on the computer system and that corresponds to the specific schema must provide; receiving, from a first security application that corresponds to a first schema, first data that is formatted according to the first schema; upon receiving the first data, updating at least one field of data stored in the repository with the received data, the at least one field of data corresponding to the first security application; after the at least one field of data is updated, a consumer application reading the at least one field of data, and detecting that the at least one field of data has been updated; in response to detecting that the at least one field of data has been updated, the consumer application displaying a notification that the protection level provided by the first security application has changed; and wherein the computer system further includes a detectoid running on the system to detect changes to the protection level provided by security applications that are not configured to communicate data to the repository, and wherein the steps further comprise: a detectoid detecting that a second security application has changed its protection level, wherein the second security application is not configured to communicate data to the repository; the detectoid obtaining data corresponding to the changed protection level of the second security application; the detectoid providing the data to the repository to update at least one field of data corresponding to the second security application; and the consumer application detecting that the at least one field of data corresponding to the second security application has been undated, and in response, displaying a notification that the protection level provided by the second security application has changed.