Patent ID: 8805994

Claim:
A method for monitoring and controlling a networked environment, the method comprising: receiving, by a network device via a network, a first packet; receiving, by a network device via a network, a second packet; and invoking an event handler in response to receiving each of the first packet and the second packet, wherein the event handler is a task of a supervisory operating system, and the event handler is interposed between a network device driver executing on the supervisory operating system and a network client application operating under a secondary operating system, and wherein the event handler performs operations comprising: examining at least one field of the first packet; determining, based at least in part on content of the at least one field of the first packet, that the first packet is acceptable; in response to determining that the first packet is acceptable, passing the first packet to the network client application of the secondary operating system; examining at least one field of the second packet; determining, based at least in part on content of the at least one field of the second packet, that the second packet is not acceptable; and in response to determining that the second packet is not acceptable, not passing the second packet to the network client application of the secondary operating system; wherein each of the determining that the first packet is acceptable and the determining that the second packet is not acceptable comprises one or more of: determining whether the first packet or the second packet is destined for a port that has been identified as being a critical port; determining whether the first packet or the second packet contains a predetermined message; determining whether the first packet or the second packet was transmitted from a processing system that is a member of a predefined group of processing systems; and determining whether the first packet or the second packet comprises a perceived security threat, wherein the supervisory operating system and the secondary operating system execute concurrently on a machine.