COMMUNICATING STATUS REGARDING APPLICATION OF COMPLIANCE POLICY UPDATES

• US 20150249681A1
• Filed: 07/10/2014
• Published: 09/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Zhang, Hao, Parthasarathy, Krishna Kumar, Chao, Lucy, Libman, Mashuri, Koretsky, Anatoly, Gao, Liphi, Xie, Yongjun, Blyth, David Alexander
• Granted Patent: US 9,432,405 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/00 Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A set of compliance policy updates are received. The compliance policy updates are sent to workloads for application. A status of the application of the compliance policies to the workloads is received from the workloads and output.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

sending a compliance policy update from a compliance policy authoring system to a workload for deployment to the workload;

automatically receiving a compliance policy status indicator from the workload indicative of a status of deployment of the compliance policy update to the workload; and

displaying a status display element indicative of the status indicated by the compliance policy status indicator.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein displaying a status display element comprises:

displaying the status display element indicative of whether the compliance policy update is currently being deployed or whether deployment has completed.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2 wherein automatically receiving comprises:

receiving an error indication indicative of errors in application of the compliance policy update to the workload.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein displaying a status display element comprises:

displaying the status display element indicative of whether the compliance policy update is deployed successfully or whether it is deployed with errors based on the error indication.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4 wherein sending comprises:

sending the compliance policy update with bindings indicative of which portions of the workload that the compliance policy update applies to.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein receiving an error indication comprises:

receiving a binding level error indication indicative of portions of the workload that the compliance policy update was unsuccessfully deployed to.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6 wherein displaying the status display element indicative of the compliance policy update being deployed with errors comprises:

displaying the binding level error indication along with a drill user input mechanism actuatable to display an error detail display showing details corresponding to the binding level error indicator.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 4 wherein the workload comprises a multi-tenant workload and wherein displaying the status display element comprises:

displaying a status display element indicative of a deployment status of the compliance policy update across all tenants in the multi-tenant workload.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8 wherein sending comprises:

sending the compliance policy update to a plurality of different workloads for deployment to the plurality of different workloads.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9 wherein displaying the status display element comprises:

displaying a status display element indicative of a deployment status of the compliance policy update across all of the plurality of different workloads.

11. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a compliance policy update at a workload;

automatically deploying the compliance policy update to the workload;

automatically identifying a status of deployment of the compliance policy update to the workload; and

sending a status indicator indicative of the status of deployment to a compliance policy authoring and management system.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 wherein identifying a status of deployment comprises:

identifying whether the deployment is in progress or completed

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein identifying a status comprises:

if the deployment is completed, identifying whether the compliance policy update is deployed successfully or with errors.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein identifying a status comprises:

if the deployment is completed with errors, identifying the errors, and further comprising re-deploying the compliance policy update to the workload when the identified errors are remedied.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 wherein automatically deploying the compliance policy update comprises:

deploying the compliance policy update to different portions of the workload identified by bindings in the compliance policy update.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 wherein identifying a status comprises:

identifying a binding level status indicative of a status of the deployment to each portion of the workload.

17. A compliance policy system, comprising:

a policy distribution system that distributes a compliance policy update to a plurality of different workloads;

a policy status processing system that receives a status indicator from each of the workloads indicative of a deployment status of the compliance policy update to the workload and generates a policy status display element based on the status indicators;

a user interface component that displays the policy status display element; and

a computer processor that is a functional part of the system and is activated by the policy distribution system, the policy status processing system and the user interface component to facilitate distributing, generating and displaying.

18. The compliance policy system of claim 17 wherein the status processing system generates the policy status display element to indicate a status of deployment of the compliance policy update to each of the plurality of different workloads.

19. The compliance policy system of claim 18 wherein the compliance policy update is applied to different portions of each of the workloads based on bindings corresponding to the compliance policy update and wherein the status processing system generates the policy status display element to identify portions of the workloads in which the deployment encountered an error.

20. The compliance policy system of claim 19 wherein the workloads are multi-tenant workloads and wherein the status processing system generates the policy status display element to identify a deployment status across tenants in the multi-tenant workloads.