Patent ID: 8312261

Claim:
A method of granting a node access to resources based on information about the node, comprising: (a) receiving, by a receiver of a gateway, a request from a node operated by a user to access a resource; (b) selecting, by an agent constructor of the gateway, a subset of scan routines from a plurality of available scan routines to include in a scanning agent, the subset of scan routines identifying information about the node to gather; (c) embedding, by an encryption function generator of the gateway, at least one encryption module in the scanning agent, the at least one encryption module comprising at least one encryption key; (d) transmitting, by a transmitter of the gateway, the scanning agent to the node; (e) receiving, by the receiver of the gateway, information gathered about the node by the subset of scan routines executing on the node, the gathered information encrypted by the at least one encryption module in the scanning agent; (f) decrypting, by a decryptor of the gateway, the received information; and (g) granting, by a policy engine of the gateway, one of a plurality of levels of access to the node based on the decrypted information.