Patent ID: 7437763

Claim:
In a computing environment, a system for monitoring the security of a computer system, the system comprising: a plurality of sources of security-related information; a connection to a backend server, wherein the backend server comprises data including firewall-related data, internet-related data, antivirus-related data including virus signature, explanation of the virus, and a possible cure for the virus, and data related to a plurality of security services operating on a plurality of machines; a source of policies comprising each of time-based policies, geography based policies, and event triggered policies; and a security service, the security service configured to monitor in real time the security-related information of the plurality of sources, the security service receiving updates from the backend server to update security settings, the security service including event handling logic which responds to user-initiated events and program-initiated events, the security service reporting security information to the backend server, the security service reporting the health of a monitored source to a user; the security service logging security-related information, the security service processing the logged information to determine if an attack has been attempted or if a security level has been altered, the security service determining actions based upon the policies, the actions comprising proactively blocking a change to a security setting and reactively undoing a change, the actions being determined dynamically based on policy and knowledge of new security attacks, actual attacks, and preventative and reactive actions to take against each attack, and the security service performing actions based on the security-related information, an action being performed automatically when indicated as automatic by the preferences and an action being performed after a preceding prompt when so indicated by the preferences, the preceding prompt varying based upon policy and upon downloaded prompt information.