Prc Inc.

Jeffrey H Walker

Wayne A Campbell

Disclosed is a Security Indications and Warning (SI&W) Engine usable in conjunction with an audit agent. The audit agent forwards normalized audits to the SI&W Engine. The SI&W Engine groups the normalized audits into related groupings. Gauges are used to count the number of occurrences of audited events. A statistical engine provides statistical representations of the number of events per user, per session and per node. A predetermined number of criteria are defined a particular gauge or gauge pair. There may be many criteria for a particular network. When a predetermined number of criteria within a criteria set are triggered, an indicator is triggered. More complex indicators can use combinations of lower level indicators to provide further indications of potential security threads. Thus, a hierarchical system of gauges, criteria and indicators is used to measure boundary violations and breaches of different barriers. Advantageously, because there are no predefined scenarios or profiles that must be performed by a potential misuser or intruder, the SI&W Engine of the present invention is capable of indicating that a potential security threat exists in near-real time.

Method and system for detecting intrusion into and misuse of a data processing system

A method of reducing the volume of native audit data from further analysis by a misuse and intrusion detection engine is disclosed. Typically, more than ninety percent of the volume of audit information received from heterogeneous operating systems does not need to be analyzed by a misuse and intrusion detection engine because this audit information can be filtered out as not posing a security threat. Advantageously, by reducing (eliminating) the volume of audit information, a misuse and intrusion engine can more quickly determine whether a security threat exists because the volume of data that the engine must consider is drastically reduced. Also, advantageously, the audit information that is forwarded to the engine is normalized to a standard format, thereby reducing the computational requirements of the engine. The method of reducing the volume of native audit data includes comparing each of the native audits against at least one template and against at least one native audit. By matching the native audits against templates of native audits that do not pose security threats, the native audits that do not pose security threats can be reduced out from further consideration. The native audits that are determined to pose potential security threats are transformed into a standardized format for further analysis by a misuse and intrusion detection engine.

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Papillon, NE, United States of America

Jeffrey H Walker