Patent ID: 7496961

Claim:
A method to provide network traffic support and physical security support comprising: initializing a plurality of virtual machines, wherein each of the plurality of virtual machines operates like a complete physical machine that can run its own operating system; initializing a virtual machine monitor in a processor system during a pre-boot phase, wherein the virtual machine monitor is configured to manage the operation of the plurality of virtual machines; identifying at least one of a network traffic intrusion event and a physical security intrusion event with the virtual machine monitor, wherein identifying the network traffic intrusion event includes: detecting an incoming network packet; determining whether the incoming network packet is attempting to access a restricted port; discarding the network packet if the network packet is attempting to access a restricted port; performing packet level virus scanning on the network packet to determine if the network packet is associated with a virus; discarding the network packet if the network packet if the network packet is associated with a virus; determining whether the incoming network packet is a denial of service attack; discarding the incoming network packet if the incoming network packet is a denial of service attack; determining whether the incoming network packet is an alert standard format packet; and invoking a system manageability agent and performing a task if the incoming network packet is an alert standard format packet; and wherein identifying the physical security intrusion event includes: detecting a physical intrusion; determining whether a user has authorization to initiate the physical intrusion; determining which components of the processor system are vulnerable to the physical intrusion; and disabling the components of the processor system that are vulnerable to the physical intrusion if the user does not have authorization to initiate the physical intrusion.