Patent ID: 8566468

Claim:
A method of validating a message received at a network component, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a message at the network component; selecting a validation scenario applicable to the message from a set of validation scenarios; determining a set of validation conditions associated with the determined validation scenario; for each validation condition of the set of validation conditions: determining whether the message passes the validation condition, and if the message does not pass the validation condition, determining that the message is invalid; and if the message passes each validation condition, determining that the message is valid, wherein the network component receives the message via an interface, each validation scenario in the set of validation scenarios is associated with a scenario definition, and the step of selecting a validation scenario from a set of validation scenarios comprises: matching a scenario interface of the scenario definition with the interface via which the network component received the message; and matching a command element of the scenario definition with a command element of the message.