Patent ID: 7712138

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for configuring and scheduling a security audit of a computer network comprising the steps of: a security audit system conducting a discovery scan to identify a first host of the computer network and assigning an asset value for the first host, wherein the asset value is based on information collected during the discovery scan and indicates the importance of the first host in the network; the security audit system comprising an active scan engine, the active scan engine configuring an audit scan to perform on the first host by selecting a first scan policy based on the asset value and a first scan frequency based on the asset value, wherein the audit scan is more thorough than the discovery scan; the active scan engine scheduling a time to perform the audit scan on the first host; the security audit system running the audit scan according to the first scan policy and the first scan frequency at the scheduled time on the first host; and the active scan engine calculating a security score for the first host based on the audit scan by summing one or more vulnerabilities associated with the first host.