Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Calvin Choon-Hwan Choe

Gopal Parupudi

Paul G Mayfield

Misty Pickford

Mukunda S Murthy

A network in which peer-to-peer remediation is provided to keep clients in the network up-to-date. As network clients establish peer-to-peer connections, they exchange status information. The status information allows the clients to mutually identify whether one client is more out-of-date than another. The more up-to-date client provides update information to the more out-of-date client. To preserve the integrity of the update process, updates are provided as signed binary files and are only applied by the client receiving the update if the binary file may be authenticated by the recipient.

Peer-to-peer remediation

Consumer computers that are not properly configured for safe access to a web service are protected from damage by controlling access to web services based on the health of the client computer. A client health web service receives health information from the client computer, determines the health status of the consumer computer, and issues a token to the consumer computer indicating its health status. The consumer computer can provide this token to other web services, which in turn may provide access to the consumer computer based on the health status indicated in the token. The client health web service may be operated as a web service specifically to determine the health of consumer computers or may have other functions, including providing access to the Internet. Also, the health information may be proxied to another device, such as a gateway device, that manages interactions with the client health web service.

Consumer computer health validation

A network in which remediation is provided to keep protective software in network clients up-to-date. As network clients connect to an access control server, the clients provide status information concerning their protective software. The access server determines whether the clients comply with a quarantine enforcement policy. Clients that comply with the policy are granted access to the network. Those that do not comply with the quarantine enforcement policy are either denied access or given limited access to the network for purposes of remediation. When the access control server denies access to a client, it determines remediation steps required to bring the client into compliance with the quarantine enforcement policy. This remediation information is communicated to the client to facilitate remediation of the client on either an automated or a manual basis. The remediation information may be communicated in the form of an address from which the client may obtain software updates, executable software, human-usable information or both remediation information.

Dynamic remediation of a client computer seeking access to a network with a quarantine enforcement policy

A method is provided for handling failures in a computer system including a compliance checking system in a computer network. In response to a client computer failing to obtain a compliance check, a determination is made as to a category of an error that at least partially caused the failure in obtaining the compliance check. As a result, the method includes performing an action to at least partially based on the determined category of the error. In some instances, the action can include allowing the client computer to connect to the network. Another method includes receiving a definition of a configurable mitigation rule, where the configurable mitigation rule describes an action to perform at least partially based on the category of an error. Yet another method includes receiving a selection of a security level of operation of the compliance checking system.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Calvin Choon-Hwan Choe