Patent ID: 7779469

Claim:
A method of provisioning an operating environment of a remote computer, the method comprising: providing a first interrogator agent for installation onto the remote computer to determine artifacts present on the remote computer; authenticating an identity of a user of the remote computer based on information regarding the artifacts received from the first interrogator agent; providing a second interrogator agent for installation on the remote computer based on the authentication of the identity of the user of the remote computer; determining whether to grant the user access to a resource based on: information received from the second interrogator agent, and a zone of trust associated with a user and criteria associated with the zone of trust, wherein determining the zone of trust includes: classifying the user as a member of a community comprising a plurality of zones of trust, creating a graph of signatures associated with each zone of trust, and associating the information concerning artifacts with a signature from the graph; and providing a process object for provisioning the remote computer to access the resource based on the determination.