International Business Machines Corporation

Mark Ambrose McKelvey

Erik Duane Lindberg

Patrick Michael Wildt

Thomas Joseph Warne

Arthur A Daniel

George B Scarborough

Sandra D Westling

John A Modry

John L Koehler

Nathanial Calvert

Jeffrey A Newton

Ruth A Upchurch

Steven P Mervosh

Eric G Roubal

Andrew E Sandstrom

Kyle David Herbig

An embedded security processor is used in conjunction with a main processor to provide security for a computer system that is accessible via a computer network. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, an expansion board is provided that has an embedded security processor dedicated to network communications security tasks. The embedded security processor is controlled by the main processor and intercepts all communications from external untrusted or unverified network systems (i.e., unsecure networks) and verifies that the attempted communication is permissible before allowing the external network communication traffic to access the main processor, or other networked computer resources accessible via a secure network.

Embedded security processor

An object oriented framework for diagnostic testing operates upon a user-defined diagnostic script to perform the desired tests. Certain core functions are provided by the framework, which interact with extensible functions. This separation of core and extensible functions allows the separation of the diagnostic application from the attributes of the test. A user may thus define extensible functions that allow the framework to test specific hardware and/or software without the framework having the knowledge of the specific tests being performed, or the results of those tests.

Object oriented framework mechanism for performing computer system

A service network has several computer systems connected together. A computer system can either be a 'Service Requestor' (SR), a 'Service Provider' (SP), or a hybrid of the two, a 'Service Provider/Requestor' (SP/R). The service network is built by an enrollment process that adds computer systems into the service network. A SP (or SP/R acting as an SP) already in the network can initiate the enrollment of an SR (or SP/R acting as an SR) into the network. In addition, a SR (or SP/R acting as an SR) can initiate a request for enrollment into the network. If such a request is initiated, it must be approved automatically or with human intervention.

Automated enrollment of a computer system into a service network of

Computer systems have the ability to monitor their components and operations, generate events which indicate the occurrence of a monitored condition (e.g. out of paper, Joe Smith just signed on, disk utilization nearing capacity, etc.), and process these events in some manner. The present invention provides significant enhancements to the latter capability. The events of an event stream or streams are 'filtered' into categories or groups of events. Once categorized, the invention associates an action or actions with the categorized event. The associated action can be logging the event, routing the event to the electronic address of a user, or sending the event to an application program for further processing.

Event handling mechanism having a process and an action association

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Mark Ambrose McKelvey