Electronic vulnerability and reliability assessment

• US 7,735,142 B2
• Filed: 06/25/2007
• Issued: 06/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Intellectual Ventures II LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Aaron, Jeffrey A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Zand, Kambiz
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran, Tongoc
• Application Number:
  US11/768,055
• Publication Number:
  US 20080172743A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,079 Days
• Field of Search: 726/1, 726/2, 726/25, 713/165, 713/166, 713/167, 707/102, 707/104.1
• US Class Current: 726/25
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/577 Assessing vulnerabilities and evaluating computer system security
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0227 Filtering policies mail message filtering H04L51/212
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface

Abstract

Systems for providing information on system vulnerabilities include a database populated with descriptive system information and a database structure configured as a hierarchical plurality of database pages configured to include element vulnerability information and links to related database pages. A rule processor module is configured to provide rules for cycling through the database structure to match keywords, such as keywords provided by user input, and descriptive system information from the database with element vulnerability information from the database structure. Other systems and methods are also provided.

Claims

1. A system for providing vulnerability information regarding a system, comprising:

a database populated with descriptive system information about the system;

a database structure configured as a hierarchical plurality of database pages, at least a portion of the hierarchical plurality of database pages including a page index, a data section and a selector section, wherein the data section is configured to include information regarding vulnerability of an element of the system and the selector section is configured to include keywords associated with at least one page index of a further, related database page of the hierarchical plurality of database pages;

a rule processor module configured to provide rules for cycling through the hierarchical plurality of database pages of the database structure to obtain a database page of the hierarchical plurality of database pages having at least one keyword that matches keywords provided by user input, wherein the at least one page index associated with the at least one keyword of the obtained database page is associated with a further, related database page to be obtained while cycling through the hierarchical plurality of database pages;

an input parser/filter module operatively coupled to the rule processor module, the input parser/filter module configured to receive policy or profile input from a user'"'"'s processing device and to convert the input into data usable by the rule processor module, wherein the data usable by the rule processor comprises at least the keywords provided by the user input;

a state accumulator module operatively coupled to the rule processor module, the state accumulator module configured to store intermediate vulnerability status and result information; and

a vulnerability accumulator module operatively coupled to the rule processor module, the vulnerability accumulator module configured to store the information regarding vulnerability of an element of the system accumulated from the data section of each of the hierarchical plurality of database pages accessed while cycling through the hierarchical plurality of database pages.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a presentation module operatively coupled to a user'"'"'s processing device and the vulnerability accumulator module, the presentation module configured to summarize and format the information regarding vulnerability of an element of the system accumulated from the data section of each of the hierarchical plurality of database pages accessed while cycling through the hierarchical plurality of database pages for utilization by the user'"'"'s processing device.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising a database interface module operatively coupled between the database and database structure, and the result accumulator module, the database interface module configured to enable provisioning and access to the database and the database structure.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the database comprises an element descriptive database (EDD).

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the database structure comprises a hierarchical vulnerability database (HVD) structure.