Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Andrew Seidel

Matthew Kraning

Corey Fredericks

Peter Dickinson

Matthew Anderson

John Holliman

A distributed system of scanning nodes is provided job portions to collectively scan network systems numbering in the tens of thousands and beyond million across the Internet. A scanning controller creates the job portions to fulfill a scanning request. The scanning controller creates the job portions based on availability of scanning nodes and a size of the scanning request (i.e., number of network addresses indicated by the request). The scanning controller creates each job portion with scanning instructions for an available scanning node to execute on a selected set of the network addresses indicated in the request, with each job portion having a different set of addresses to scan and being independently executable.

Distributed scanning

A system for scanning a network includes an interface and a processor. The interface is configured to receive an indication to scan a set of network addresses. The processor is configured to determine a set of available scanning nodes and determine a job plan for scanning the set of network addresses using the set of available scanning nodes. The job plan includes one or more job portions. The processor is configured to, for a job portion of the one or more job portions, select a scanning node of the set of available scanning nodes and provide the job portion to the scanning node.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Andrew Seidel