Use of an application controller to monitor and control software file and application environments

#The present invention is related to a security system that may be used to determine an appropriate application, application environment, and/or access or security control measure based at least in part on using an application controller program to evaluate a file's reputation information.

#Computer security is increasingly important and protecting files and computer systems from malware containing files has become increasingly difficult. A need exists to improve file security and malware protection systems.

#An aspect of the present invention relates to the treatment and management of files based on an understanding of their history and/or reputation. The invention, in certain embodiments, involves acquiring an understanding of a file's reputation, possibly based on a number of factors or just an understanding of whether it came from a trusted source, and then opening the file through a software application that treats the file in accordance with its reputation. The software application may be chosen and/or launched through an application manager once the file's reputation is understood. For example, the application manager may understand that a file has been received from the Internet and thus judge its reputation as ‘suspect.’ Once judged as suspicious, the application manager may cause the file to be opened by a software application that is adapted to manage suspicious files. This software application may also operate in a virtual space that is separated from more secure spaces of a computer or computer network to prevent possible problems that may be caused by the suspicious file. The application manager may treat a trusted file in a similar manner, by choosing an application based on the trusted nature of the file for opening the file. For example, if a file was generated by a trusted program and only communicated through an intranet, the file may be considered ‘trusted’ or of a high reputation. In this event, the application manager may choose a software application adapted to manage trusted files to open the trusted file. This software application may also be in a virtual environment, but more likely it is in a less restrictive environment because there is no apparent reason to keep the file separated from other environments in the computer or computer network because of the file's trusted nature.

#The invention and the following detailed description of certain embodiments thereof may be understood by reference to the following figures:

#FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a threat management facility providing protection to an enterprise against a plurality of threats.

#FIG. 2 depicts a simplified framework for using an application controller to assess a software file and direct the launch of an appropriate software application based at least in part on reputation information associated with the file.

#While the invention has been described in connection with certain preferred embodiments, other embodiments would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art and are encompassed herein.

#All documents referenced herein are hereby incorporated by reference.

#FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a threat management facility providing protection to an enterprise against a plurality of threats. An aspect of the present invention relates to corporate policy management and implementation through a unified threat management facility 100. As will be explained in more detail below, a threat management facility 100 may be used to protect computer assets from many threats, both computer-generated threats and user-generated threats. The threat management facility 100 may be multi-dimensional in that it may be designed to protect corporate assets from a variety of threats and it may be adapted to learn about threats in one dimension (e.g. worm detection) and apply the knowledge in another dimension (e.g. spam detection). Policy management is one of the dimensions for which the threat management facility can provide a control capability. A corporation or other entity may institute a policy that prevents certain people (e.g. employees, groups of employees, types of employees, guest of the corporation, etc.) from accessing certain types of computer programs. For example, the corporation may elect to prevent its accounting department from using a particular version of an instant messaging service or all such services. In this example, the policy management facility 112 may be used to update the policies of all corporate computing assets with a proper policy control facility or it may update a select few. By using the threat management facility 100 to facilitate the setting, updating and control of such policies the corporation only needs to be concerned with keeping the threat management facility 100 up to date on such policies. The threat management facility 100 can take care of updating all of the other corporate computing assets.