Patent ID: 7536456

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining in a data store, a natural language policy document for a network policy and one or more machine-processable policy rules; associating at least a portion of the natural language policy document to at least one of the machine-processable policy rules; applying the at least one of the machine-processable policy rules to information gathered about a network; and determining, based on the application of the at least one of the machine-processable policy rules, compliance with the network policy; wherein the information is gathered via a plurality of audit servers using heterogeneous information sources, the heterogeneous information sources including at least one of a scanner, a camera, and manually entered data; wherein each of the plurality of audit servers include a scan harness that interoperates with the scanner; wherein the audit servers are configured to allow enumeration of unique network devices, to allow correlation of characteristics associated with the unique network devices, and to filter network packets.