US 2021/0243605 A1 · FIREWALL DISCOVERY AND MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Updating firewalls can be difficult if many devices need to be manually reconfigured. To assist, vendors provide management tools. If the tool requires manual adding/deleting known firewalls, this is problematic in networks with many devices. If devices are hosted within a virtual private cloud, the tool may adopt a centralized “star” configuration and maintain live contact with all firewalls. This exposes firewalls to risk if the central tool is compromised. An alternative to a central tool is to implement a tool local to an environment, secure the tool with multi-level authentication, and provide automatic active firewall discovery, e.g., automate adding/deleting firewalls in an environment defined with respect to criteria that may be used to define a collection of active firewalls. Configuration changes may be pushed to the collection. Authentication credentials to access the firewalls are ephemerally cached and flushed after use so the tool cannot be compromised.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method for a mobile device to collectively manage a collection of devices associated with an environment including devices, the method comprising:

receiving an identifier corresponding to a first device of the environment;
automatically determining the collection of devices based at least in part on a search for the identifier in the environment;
providing a first credential to a selected device of the collection of devices to enable reconfiguring the selected device;
caching the first credential in an ephemeral memory;
applying a new configuration to the selected device;
and
flushing the ephemeral memory.

4 more elements

A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon for managing a collection of devices associated with an environment including devices, that, in response to execution by a processor, the instructions are operable to cause a computing system to:

receive an identifier corresponding to a first device of the environment;
automatically determine the collection of devices based at least in part on a search for the identifier in the environment;
provide a first credential to a selected device of the collection of devices to enable reconfiguring the selected device;
cache the first credential in an ephemeral memory;
apply a new configuration to the selected device;
and
flush the ephemeral memory.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Firewall discovery and management

Life of this patent

Firewall discovery and management

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20