Automated Risk Assessment for Software Applications
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Solution Overview
Problem
In enterprise computing environments, ensuring network security is challenging due to software vulnerabilities and the risk of malicious software installations, particularly when end users require administrative rights or attach their own devices to the network, making it difficult to balance security with user productivity.
Innovation Solution
An automated risk assessment and compliance reporting system is implemented, which creates a risk profile for each computing device based on software applications, user access levels, and device information, allowing for proactive actions such as disabling logins, uninstalling applications, or upgrading software to mitigate security threats.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If aggressive lock down mechanisms and tightly controlled software policies are implemented, then network security is improved, but user productivity and experience deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary risk assessment by analyzing application characteristics, device information, and user data before software installation or execution. This proactive approach identifies potential security threats in advance, allowing the system to block only high-risk applications while permitting low-risk ones, thus maintaining security without unnecessarily restricting user productivity
Solution Approach 2:
The risk assessment is customized for each specific combination of application, device, and user. The system generates unique risk profiles by locally evaluating relevant factors such as application threat classification, device security posture, and user role, rather than applying uniform restrictions across all users and devices. This granular approach preserves user productivity for low-risk scenarios while maintaining security for high-risk ones
2Reliability
If manual risk assessment and compliance monitoring are performed, then security control is improved, but system complexity and operational overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs risk assessment by gathering device information, application characteristics, and user data, then autonomously generates risk profiles and determines appropriate actions. This self-service capability eliminates the need for manual security monitoring and reduces operational overhead, while the automated decision-making process maintains consistent security control without requiring complex human intervention
Solution Approach 2:
The risk profile engine serves multiple functions: it assesses security risk, generates compliance reports, determines actionable insights, and triggers automated responses. By consolidating these diverse security management tasks into a single multi-functional system, the patent reduces overall system complexity while maintaining comprehensive security control
3Reliability
If comprehensive security monitoring and assessment are implemented, then security coverage is improved, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs partial risk assessment by focusing on the most relevant factors for each specific scenario. Rather than analyzing every possible security parameter uniformly, the system selectively evaluates application characteristics, device information, and user data based on their relevance to the current context, achieving comprehensive security coverage with reduced processing time through targeted analysis
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are various embodiments for assessing risk associated with a software application on a user computing device in an enterprise networked environment. An application rating is generated for the software application based at least in part on application characteristics. A risk analysis for the installation of the application is generated based at least in part on the application rating, the user computing device, and user information.