Patent ID: 7243148

Claim:
A method of conducting an automated vulnerability assessment on a computer network, comprising: sending a plurality of IP addresses to a network scanning process; assigning a first group of IP addresses from the plurality of IP addresses to a first subscanning process and assigning a second group of IP addresses from the plurality of IP addresses to a second subscanning process, the first subceanning process scanning the computer network with a first selected sequence of IP addresses from the first group of IP addresses and receiving and storing a first set of responses from the computer network, the second subscanning process scanning the computer network with a second selected sequence of IP addresses from the second group of IP addresses and receiving and storing a second set of responses from the computer network, the first selected sequence of IP addresses and the second selected sequence of IP addresses being applied in parallel; and providing the first set of responses and the second set of responses as data for performing a vulnerability assessment of the computer network; wherein: the first group of IP addresses applied by the first subscanning process are distributed among at least a first batch of IP addresses and a second batch of IP addresses; the first batch of IP addresses comprises a first non-ordered sequence of a first portion of the first group of IP addresses and the second batch of IP addresses comprises a second non-ordered sequence of a second portion of the first group of IP addresses; the second group of IP addresses applied by the second subscanning process are distributed among at least a third batch of IP addresses and a fourth batch of IP addresses; and the third batch IP addresses comprises a third non-ordered sequence of a first portion of the second group of IP addresses and the fourth batch of IP addresses comprises a fourth non-ordered sequence of a second portion of the second group IP addresses.