Patent ID: 8850512

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying each virtual machine in a set of virtual machines managed by a virtual machine manager; determining, for each virtual machine in the set, whether the respective virtual machine is online, wherein a first subset is determined to be offline and a second subset is determined to be online; collecting, for each virtual machine in the first subset, a machine image of the virtual machine via the virtual machine manager; causing a security tool authenticated by the virtual machine manager to assess security of each virtual machine in the first subset from the collected machine images; loading a respective agent, via an application programming interface (API) of the virtual machine manager, on each virtual machine in the second subset, wherein each agent comprises logic to perform one or more security assessments within the corresponding online virtual machine and the API permits selective access to firewalled protected virtualized resources in the second subset of virtual machines; and using the agents loaded on the virtual machines in the second subset to assess security of the corresponding virtual machines.