Patent ID: 7089306

Claim:
A method for automatically collecting information about assets of an organization, comprising the steps of: 1) opening a fingerprint file and reading an element ID code where a fingerprint file for any particular element or asset contains information about the attributes of said element or asset; 2) finding all attributes having element ID codes that map to said element ID; 3) for an attribute of the element identified in step 1, determining the collection instruction associated with said attribute, and looking up the protocol to use in executing said collection instruction; 4) using the protocol designated for each collection instruction, executing the collection instruction and collecting attribute data about the element; 5) repeating steps 3 and 4 for each other attribute of the element identified in step 1 to collect all the attribute data regarding said element; 6) executing one or more rules included in said fingerprint or pointed to by said fingerprint to calculate the probability that the element identified in step 1 exists.