Methods and systems for enabling community-tested security features for legacy applications

A computer-implemented method for enabling community-tested security features for legacy applications, the method comprising:

• identifying a plurality of client systems;
• identifying a subset of the plurality of client systems that is designated to test security features for at least one legacy application that has yet to be updated to take advantage of at least one existing security feature provided by an operating system on which the legacy application is installed;
• transmitting a security-feature-enablement rule provided for the legacy application by a security vendor to at least one client system in the subset, wherein the security-feature-enablement rule injects an instruction into the legacy application's code that calls the existing security feature provided by the operating system;
• receiving, from the client system in the subset, automatically generated health-impact information that identifies the impact of the security-feature-enablement rule on the health of the legacy application on the client system, the health-impact information comprising:
• a first health evaluation performed prior to executing the security-feature-enablement rule;
• a second health evaluation performed after executing the security-feature-enablement rule;
• determining, based on the automatically generated health-impact information, whether to roll out the security-feature-enablement rule to the plurality of client systems;
• transmitting an instruction to disable the security-feature-enablement rule for the legacy application in response to a determination, based on the health-impact information, that the security-feature-enablement rule is likely to decrease at least one of performance and stability of the legacy application.

A system for enabling community-tested security features for legacy applications, the system comprising at least one central processing unit configured to execute a client module programmed to:

• identify a legacy application that has yet to be updated to take advantage of at least one existing security feature provided by an operating system on which the legacy application is installed;
• identify a security-feature-enablement rule provided for the legacy application by a security vendor;
• execute the security-feature-enablement rule provided by the security vendor to update the legacy application to take advantage of the existing security feature provided by the operating system, wherein executing the security-feature-enablement rule comprises injecting an instruction into the legacy application's code that calls the existing security feature provided by the operating system;
• automatically determine health-impact information that identifies the impact of the security-feature-enablement rule on the health of the legacy application by:
• performing a first health evaluation prior to executing the security-feature-enablement rule;
• after executing the security-feature-enablement rule, performing a second health evaluation;
• relay the health-impact information that identifies the impact of the security-feature-enablement rule on the health of the legacy application to a server provided by the security vendor;
• receive an instruction from the server to disable the security-feature-enablement rule for the legacy application in response to a determination, based on the health-impact information, that the security-feature-enablement rule is likely to decrease at least one of performance and stability of the legacy application.