Patent ID: 7810159

Claim:
A method of reducing the vulnerability of network user devices to security threats, comprising: establishing communications between a user device connected to a network and a web site on the network; executing a health check application residing on the user device that gathers information from the user device and sends the gathered information to the web site; scanning the user device via the health check application to determine whether the user device contains a particular version of one or more core applications; downloading the particular version of the one or more core applications via the network in response to verifying that the user device does not contain the particular version of the one or more core applications; installing the downloaded one or more core applications on the user device; scanning the user device via the health check application for security vulnerabilities; downloading a patch via the network in response to detecting a security vulnerability, wherein the patch is configured to remedy the security vulnerability; executing the downloaded patch on the user device to remedy the detected security vulnerability; sending to the web site, via the health check application, information about any applications and patches downloaded to the user device.