International Business Machines Corporation

Ruediger Rissmann

Michael Elton Nidd

Joel W Branch

James F Riordan

Diego M Zamboni

Marc Philippe Stoecklin

Yann Duponchel

Markus A Regli

A broker service that acquires location based image data receives a request from a requestor. The request comprises request criteria that at least include a location criterion and a time criterion for obtaining image data, which comprises at least one of a still image and a video. The broker service determines that a position indication of a first producer of a plurality of producers fulfils the location criterion at least to an extent. The plurality of producers comprises devices remote from the requestor and having capabilities of image capture and location determination. The broker service transmits an image request to the first producer. The image request corresponds to the request. The broker service receives image data from the first producer responsive to the image request. The broker service determines that the image data fulfils the time criterion. The broker service transmits the image data to the requestor.

Broker service system to acquire location based image data

Mechanisms are provided for identifying transparent network communication interception appliances in a network topology. The mechanisms collect network configuration data from a plurality of devices in the network topology and analyze the collected network configuration data using one or more heuristics to identify patterns in the collected network configuration data indicative of the presence of a transparent network communication interception appliance. The mechanisms calculate a confidence measure value based on results of the analysis of the collected network configuration data. The mechanisms further send a notification of a detected presence of a transparent network communication interception appliance to a computing device in response to the calculated confidence measure value meeting or exceeding at least one threshold value.

Detecting transparent network communication interception appliances

Mechanisms are provided for collecting configuration data from components of a managed computing system environment. A portion of code is obtained, in a data processing system, from a data collection system that does not have security credentials to allow the data collection system to directly access to the managed computing system environment. The portion of code is executed by the data processing system using security credentials maintained in the data processing system. Executing the portion of code causes the data processing system to access the managed computing system environment and collect configuration data from the managed computing system environment. The data processing system, via the portion of code, provides the configuration data collected from the managed computing system to the data collection system which stores the collected configuration data in a data storage.

Web-based security proxy for computing system environment scanning

Methods and apparatus are provided for managing an IP network interconnecting a plurality of network hosts (). Status information, indicative of status of a host, is automatically acquired from each host (). The status information, such as MAC address, security and/or operational information, acquired from a host () is automatically recorded in at least one DNS record, associated with the IP address of that host (), of a DNS server (). The host status information in the DNS records can then be accessed for network management operations. The automatic acquisition and recording of the status information may be performed by a DHCP server () of the network on allocation of dynamic IP addresses to hosts ().

IP network management based on automatically acquired network entity status information

The invention relates to a method for operating virtual networks. The method comprises providing a first virtual network comprising a first set of network ports assigned to a first virtualization tag (T) and a second virtual network comprising a second set of network ports assigned to a second virtualization tag (T), the first and the second virtual network having compatible address ranges and being adapted to only pass data packets within them, providing a first network node having a source address (SA) in the first virtual network and being operationally connected to a first port (P) assigned to the first virtual network by means of the first virtualization tag (T), monitoring the first network node in order to detect a predetermined condition, and, on detection of the predetermined condition, reassigning the first port (P) to the second virtual network by means of assigning the second virtualization tag (T) to the first port (P), such that no data packet can be passed from the first network node (N) to a second network node (N) connected to a second port (P) assigned to the first virtual network by means of the first virtualization tag (T) directly and keeping of the source address (SA) for the first network node (N) in the second virtual network (). The invention further relates to a further method for operation virtual networks, a data network system and a computer program product adapted to perform the inventive methods.

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Zurich, Switzerland

Ruediger Rissmann