Patent ID: 7308712

Claim:
A method for resolving vulnerabilities in a plurality of computers in a network, comprising: aggregating vulnerability information on a plurality of computer vulnerabilities into a remediation database; constructing at least one remediation signature to address a computer vulnerability, wherein a remediation signature comprises an automated sequence of actions which may be taken with respect to a computer to modify the computer to address a corresponding vulnerability on the computer; scanning at least a portion of the plurality of computers in the network; recording vulnerabilities identified by the scanner on the scanned portion of the plurality of computers in the network; mapping the identified vulnerabilities to corresponding remediation signatures; managing vulnerability resolution by selectively resolving at least one identified vulnerability on the scanned portion of the plurality of computers by deploying at least one remediation signature to at least a selected portion of the scanned portion of the plurality of computers and using the deployed signature to remediate the identified vulnerability on the selected portion of the scanned portion of the plurality of computers.