Patent ID: 7849184

Claim:
An apparatus to implement an auditor to work with a virtual monitoring, alerting, controlling, and sharing (MACS) device, which is designed to receive data from an actual sensor, monitor, or device (SMD), the apparatus comprising: a processor to execute an expected behavior logic, the expected behavior logic to: monitor for receipt of data by the virtual MACS device from the actual SMD, the data regarding functionality of the SMD; monitor for receipt of additional data by the MACS device from an additional SMD that is of the same type and model as the SMD, the additional data regarding functionality of the additional SMD; compare the data and the additional data with a stored range of accepted behaviors of the SMD and the additional SMD, wherein the range of accepted behaviors represent behaviors of non-malfunctioning SMDs; make a determination that the SMD and the additional SMD are behaving outside the range of the accepted behaviors based on the data received from the SMD and the additional SMD; and detect a problem that is shared by the SMD and the additional SMD based on the determination; the processor to execute an additional logic to determine whether the problem can be corrected by an update of the SMD and of the additional SMD; the processor to obtain the update from an update server via a web syndication feed; and the processor to execute an update logic to deploy the update to the SMD and to the additional SMD if the problem can be corrected by the update and to determine whether the updates were successfully installed on the SMD and on the additional SMD.