Quarantine Over Remote Desktop Protocol

• US 20080208957A1
• Filed: 02/28/2007
• Published: 08/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ben-Shachar, Ido, Palekar, Ashwin, Malakapalli, Meher, Ding, Lisen, Moram, Venugopala Rao
• Application Number:
  US11/680,262
• Publication Number:
  US 20080208957A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/00 Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0823 using certificates cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication involving certificates H04L9/3263
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3263 involving certificates, e.g. public key certificate [PKC] or attribute certificate [AC]; Public key infrastructure [PKI] arrangements network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using certificates in a packet data network H04L63/0823

Abstract

Described are systems and methods for implementing quarantine over a remoting protocol. The systems and methods verify whether remotely connected computing devices or client devices comply with specified system health requirements. This includes determining whether the remotely connected computing devices have correct security software installed, current operating system updates, correct configuration, etc.

Claims

1. A network system comprising:

a network;

one or more client devices connected to the network;

a server communicating to the client devices through a remoting protocol, wherein the server includes a quarantine enforcement server that quarantines one or more of the one or more client devices if minimum system health requirements are not met.

2. The network system of claim 1, wherein the client devices are connected to server through a communication protocol, and that the communicating between the server and client devices is through the remoting protocol over the communication protocol.

3. The network system of claim 1, wherein the minimum system health requirements are specified by a network system administrator.

4. The network system of claim 1, wherein the minimum system health requirements are based on a statement of health sent from the one or more client devices to the server.

5. The network system of claim 1 further comprising a private network that includes one or more private computing devices connected to the server.

6. A computing device comprising:

a memory;

one or more processors operatively coupled to the memory;

a quarantine enforcement client coupled to the one or more processors and memory that provides a statement of health of the computing device to a remote server.

7. The computing device of claim 6, wherein the client device is denied permission or given limited access to a private network through the server, based on the statement of health that is provided.

8. The computing device of claim 6, wherein the quarantine enforcement client validates an authentication certificate to establish a trust relationship with the server.

9. The computing device of claim 6 further comprising a gateway client that requests an authentication certificate from the server, and sends the authentication certificate to the quarantine enforcement client.

10. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the gateway client operates as a user application and the quarantine enforcement client operates as a machine process.

11. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the gateway client sends an encrypted version of the statement of health to the server.

12. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the gateway client receives sends statement of health response from the server.

13. The computing device of claim 6 further comprising a quarantine agent that provides the statement of health to the quarantine enforcement client.

14. A method comprising:

connecting to one or more computing devices through a communication protocol over a remoting protocol;

determining if the one or more computing devices meets a minimum system health requirement; and

quarantining computing devices that do not meet the minimum system health requirement.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the determining includes sending a statement of health to the client devices, sending an authentication certificate to the client devices, and establishing a trust relationship based on the authentication certificate.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the statement of health and authentication certificate are encrypted.

17. The method of claim 15 further comprising sending a statement of health response to the computing devices.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein quarantining includes remediation measures to place the computing devices that do not meet the statement of health into compliance.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein quarantining includes denying non-compliant computing devices access to other networks managed by the server.

20. The method of claim 14 further comprising providing full connection to client devices in compliance with the minimum system health requirement.