Formalizing, diffusing, and enforcing policy advisories and monitoring policy compliance in the management of networks

A communication method for managing network policy for networks of computational device, comprising the steps of:

• registering a plurality of computers to a central server by a plurality of distributed clients, each of said plurality of distributed clients running on one of said computers, said central server comprising:
• a registration server, wherein said registration server processes registration requests from distributed clients;
• a reporting server, wherein said reporting server process reports of relevance events from individual computers and passes them on to the central database;
• and
• an action server, wherein said action server receives action requests from said management console serves them up to individual distributed clients;
• subscribing said distributed clients to a plurality of advice provider sites for each registered computer by a network administrator using a unified management interface;
• gathering by each of said plurality of clients a plurality of advisories from said advice provider sites for each registered computer, wherein each of said advisories comprises:
• a relevance clause written in a formal descriptive language to specify criteria determining when said advisory is relevant;
• a message providing explanatory material explaining said advisory;
• and an action providing a solution which can be deployed by said central server from a management interface and executed;
• reporting relevance of said advisories from said advice provider sites for each registered computer to said network administrator using said unified management interface by means of said central server;
• viewing said advisories by a system administrator with a unified management interface;
• deploying selected actions to a selected group of computers by said system administrator to said central server with said management interface by means of said central server;
• and
• performing deployed actions by said distributed clients running on said registered computer to apply solutions.

A distributed client for a computer in a network policy management system for networks of computational devices, comprising:

• means for gathering advisories from a plurality of advice provider sites;
• means for determining relevance of said advisories, wherein each of said advisories comprises:
• a relevance clause written in a formal descriptive language to specify criteria determining when said advisory is relevant;
• a message providing explanatory material explaining said advisory;
• and
• an action providing a solution;
• means for reporting relevance to a central server coupled to a central database, said central server for coordinating relay of information to and from individual computational devices, storing and retrieving information about individual computational devices and presenting information to a system administrator via a unified management interface, said central server comprising:
• a registration server, wherein said registration server processes registration requests from distributed clients;
• a reporting server, wherein said reporting server process reports of relevance events from individual computers and passes them on to the central database;
• and
• an action server, wherein said action server receives action requests from said management console serves them up to individual distributed client;
• and
• means for gathering actions from said central server;
• wherein said distributed client gathers advisories from said plurality of advice provider sites with said means for gathering advisories, and
• wherein said distributed client determines relevance of said advisories with said means for determining relevance and wherein said distributed client may report relevant advisories by said means for reporting.