Patent ID: 8661534

Claim:
A method performed by a first computer system for causing an analyzed computer system to comply with a security policy, comprising: receiving an identifier of a second computer system to be analyzed; receiving, from a compliance application running under a user account, via a common provider interface, an indication to check compliance of the second computer system; receiving a compliance document, the compliance document indicating a compliance criterion; determining whether the compliance document is compatible with an analyzing method; if the compliance document is compatible with the analyzing method, determining whether the second computer system satisfies the compliance criterion even through the user account does not have sufficient privileges to determine whether the second computer system satisfies the compliance criterion; if the second computer system does not satisfy the compliance criterion, computing a remediation action based on a difference between the compliance document and an intermediate compliance report and programmatically causing, without user action, the second computer system to undertake the remediation action so that the second computer system complies with the security policy, wherein the intermediate compliance report indicates which compliance criteria specified in the compliance document are not satisfied, wherein the remediation action is applied by employing a higher security privilege than a security privilege employed by a user of the computing system; and compiling remediation results indicating whether the remediation was successful.