Patent ID: 8914846

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: periodically sampling, by a first computer system, information regarding a program-code-based operational state of a second computer system; determining whether the program-code-based operational state of the second computer system represents a violation of one or more security policies of a network to which the second computer system is connected by causing to be evaluated, by the first computer system, the information with respect to the one or more security policies, wherein each security policy of the one or more security policies defines at least one parameter condition violation of which is potentially indicative of unauthorized activity on the second computer system or manipulation of the second computer system to make the second computer system vulnerable to attack; when a result of the determining is affirmative, then: causing, by the first computer system, a remediation to be identified that can be applied to the second computer system to address the violation; and causing, by the first computer system, the identified remediation to be deployed to the second computer system; and wherein the violation is based at least in part on one or more of: whether a particular process is running on the second computer system; existence or non-existence of a particular application on the second computer system; a version of the particular application installed on the second computer system; a status of the particular application with respect to whether a patch associated with the particular application has been installed on the second computer system; a version of an operating system installed on the second computer system; a type of the operating system; and a configuration of the operating system.