System and method for remote storage device scanning for detecting restricted content therein

A computer system for automatically and remotely identifying restricted content on a remote computer system, said computer system comprising:

• a memory for storing a list of known restricted content, said list comprising metadata that identifies said known restricted content;
• and
• a processor that executes instructions of a method to identify the restricted content, said method comprising:
• identifying a storage device of said remote computer network;
• retrieving metadata from the storage device of said remote computer network, wherein the metadata comprises hash values associated with files stored on the storage device, wherein the retrieving metadata from the storage device of said remote computer network comprises retrieving only metadata from the storage devices for the files that have been added or modified since a previous scan;
• retrieving hash values associated with known restricted content from a remote database, wherein a hash value uniquely identifies a respective file and is based on a digest thereof;
• comparing said hash values associated with files stored on the storage device to said hash values associated with known restricted content;
• and
• flagging the respective file stored on the storage device and indicating a file identifier associated with said respective file when a hash value associated with said respective file substantially matches at least one of said hash values associated with known restricted content.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embedded therein program instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of a device, causes the device to execute a process that automatically identifies restricted content on a remote computer system, the process comprising:

• accessing a remote computer network;
• identifying a storage device of said remote computer network;
• retrieving metadata from the storage device of said remote computer network, wherein the metadata comprises hash values associated with files stored on the storage device, wherein the retrieving metadata from the storage device of said remote computer network comprises retrieving only metadata from the storage device for files that have been added or modified since a previous scan;
• retrieving hash values associated with known restricted content from a remote database, wherein a hash value uniquely identifies a respective file and is based on a digest thereof;
• comparing said hash values associated with files stored on the storage device to said hash values associated with known restricted content;
• and
• flagging the respective file stored on the storage device and indicating a file identifier associated with said respective file when a hash value associated with said respective file substantially matches at least one of said hash values associated with known restricted content.