Patent ID: 7725578

Claim:
A method for providing status information to a system administrator on a computer network, said method comprising: communicating to a monitoring application from a detection administrator a signature list and an alert message list wherein said signature list includes a first message signature having a corresponding status message from said alert message list; monitoring device data initiated from a communication initiation device within said computer network, wherein said communication initiation device includes a registration database for storing registration information for a data processing device; determining by said communication initiation device whether or not an Internet Protocol (IP) address of said data processing device is registered in said registration database; in response to said determining by said communication initiation device that said IP address of said data processing device is not registered in said registration database, sending from said communication initiation device a communication to said data processing device, wherein said communication includes said first message signature from said signature list; determining by said monitoring application within said data processing device whether or not said device data includes a second message signature, wherein said second message signature matches said first message signature; and in response to a determination that said device data includes said second message signature that matches said first message signature generating and sending said corresponding status message by said data processing device to said system administrator within said computer network.