Mcafee, Inc.

Andrew Kemp

Fraser Peter Howard

Bobby Rai

Alex J Hinchliffe

Alexander James Hinchliffe

A security policy distribution system encapsulates parameters for a security policy and instructions for applying the parameters to a corresponding security program into a self-contained configuration file. When the self-contained configuration file is executed on behalf of a computer, the corresponding security program on the computer is updated with the parameters, thus distributing the security policy to the computer.

Distribution of security policies for small to medium-sized organizations

A peer-to-peer network is monitored for suspicious activity based on patterns of activity. When a particular pattern of suspicious activity is detected, an action associated with the particular pattern is taken. The activity monitored may include network traffic among peers and data sharing on a peer in the network. The action may be to log information about the suspicious activity and/or to send an alert about the suspicious activity.

Desktop security in peer-to-peer networks

A malware detecting system is described in which a client computersends a file access clearance request to an assessment computerto determine whether or not access is permitted to that file. In this way, the different client computers on a networkmay share their scan results and centralized control may be provided over access permissions to individual files or groups of files.

Centrally managed malware scanning

A source computerstores updated data that is to be distributed to a plurality of destination computers (to). The destination computers (to) are divided into groups sharing a common priority level (). Each of these groups is then associated with a push update task to be executed by the source computer. These push update tasks are then sequentially executed. If a particular group of destination computers exceeds a threshold size, then it may be further divided in accordance with a hierarchy of splitting rules. The push update tasks use multicasting to transfer the update data to the destination computers within their groups in a manner that reduces network traffic.

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Oxford, United Kingdom

Andrew Kemp