Patent ID: 8281402

Claim:
A method performed by a host electronic device, comprising: detecting, by an agent executing on the host electronic device, an attempt by the host electronic device to fully connect the host electronic device to a network; in response to the detecting the attempt, restricting, under control of the agent, all traffic between the host electronic device and the network to only traffic used to boot the host electronic device, the restricting including the agent programming one or more traffic filters of the host electronic device to prevent traffic other than bootstrap protocol traffic from flowing between the host electronic device and the network; during the restricting all traffic between the host electronic device and the network to only traffic used to boot the host electronic device: testing, by the agent, the host electronic device from a sub-system within the host electronic device to determine a device vulnerability; comparing, by the agent, results of the testing with expected test results and generating a report based on the comparison; and transmitting, by the agent, the report from the host electronic device to signify the device vulnerability to a remote policy server; and receiving, at the host electronic device, an indication from the remote policy server of whether the host electronic device is permitted to fully connect to the network, wherein fully connecting the host electronic device to the network includes the agent reprogramming the one or more traffic filters of the host electronic device to allow traffic other than bootstrap protocol traffic to flow between the host electronic device and the network.