Patent Document ID: 8997234
Application ID: 13192214
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method performed by a scoring engine in a network environment, the method comprising: identifying an asset with at least one vulnerability risk; identifying at least one service running on at least one port on the asset; identifying at least one connection to the at least one port; calculating an operational dependence role of the asset as a function of the at least one service and the at least one connection, wherein the operational dependence role indicates a relative importance of the asset in the network environment, wherein calculating the operational dependence role comprises calculating at least (i) a service dependence score for each of one or more ports on the asset as a weighted sum of an average of connections to the service running on the port and a protocol importance of a protocol associated with the port (ii) a host dependence score for the asset as a function of the one or more service dependence scores calculated for each of the one or more ports and (iii) a data importance score representing an importance of data communicated by the asset, wherein the operational dependence role is a function of a summation of the host dependence score and a multiplication of the host dependence score by the data importance score; and modifying the vulnerability risk based on the operational dependence role.