Patent ID: 8302198

Claim:
A system for enabling remote registry service security audits, comprising: a vulnerability management system that maintains a model of a network, wherein the model of the network includes a plurality of devices discovered in the network that have a remote registry service; and an active vulnerability scanner that actively scans the network to detect one or more vulnerabilities in the network, wherein the active vulnerability scanner is configured to: identify one or more of the plurality of devices discovered in the network that have disabled the remote registry service; communicate one or more activation messages to the devices that have disabled the remote registry service, wherein the activation messages enable the remote registry service on the identified devices; interact with the enabled remote registry service on the identified devices to obtain registry information from the identified devices; and communicate one or more deactivation messages to the identified devices in response to obtaining the registry information from the identified devices, wherein the deactivation messages disable the remote registry service on the identified devices.