Patent ID: 8479293

Claim:
A method of ensuring the security of an open platform, the method comprising the steps of: loading software suitable for securely operating within an open platform environment on a computer system compliant with the open platform environment, the computer system consisting of a host computer and a portable computing device; upon loading the software on the computer system, initiating a pre-synchronization scan; during the pre-synchronization scan, validating the software by the use of a validator program residing within a secure environment in the computer system such that the validator program scans the software that is loaded in the secure environment; wherein the act of scanning and validating comprises running the code in an emulator for the computer system within the secure environment comprising a modified operating system for the emulator to run in, allowing the execution of the code to be examined for any new malicious routines as well as against known malicious signatures; marking the software that is loaded as valid or invalid by the use of a flag; and, automatically denying the software the ability to operate on any environment within the computer system and denying synchronization of the software with the portable computer device if the validator fails to identify said software as valid.