Malicious Data Scan Service Offloading

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Solution Overview

Problem

Communication networks face inefficiencies in scanning for malicious data, such as viruses and malware, due to resource consumption by scanning processes within application programs, which can lead to decreased performance and increased risk of malicious data spread as network size and user numbers grow.

Innovation Solution

Hosting a malicious data scanning service on security servers in a load-balanced datacenter environment, offloading the scanning process from application programs to dedicated security servers, allowing for efficient scaling and resource management.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If scanning for malicious data is performed within application programs, then malicious data can be identified, but application program performance decreases due to resource consumption

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvemalicious data identificationVSAvoidapplication program performance
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The malicious data scanning function is extracted from the application program and relocated to a dedicated security server. The application program sends content to be scanned to the security server, which performs the scanning operation independently. This separation removes the resource burden of scanning from the application program while maintaining the security detection capability.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

2Quantity of substance

If the number of users and devices in the communication network increases, then network capacity grows, but the time and resources required for scanning data increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvenumber of users and devicesVSAvoidscanning time
Core Design Contradiction:
Quantity of substanceVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

A security server acts as an intermediary between the application program and the scanning process. The security server receives scanning requests from the application program, performs the malicious data detection, and returns results. This intermediary structure allows the scanning operation to be decoupled from the application's execution path, enabling parallel processing and reducing the time impact on user operations.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

3Reliability

If scanning content is performed within the application program, then security can be maintained, but resources of the application program are consumed

Engineering Contradiction:
ImprovesecurityVSAvoidapplication program resources
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system is segmented into distinct functional components: the application program handles user interactions and content management, while the security server handles malicious data detection. This segmentation allows each component to specialize in its function, with the security server having dedicated resources for scanning operations, thereby reducing the resource consumption of the application program while maintaining security.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentUS10826917B2Malicious data scan service
Publication Date: 2020.11.03 SERVICENOW INC
  • US10826917B2 patent drawing
  • US10826917B2 patent drawing
  • US10826917B2 patent drawing

AI summary

A communication network may scan data to identify and prevent the spread of malicious data, such as viruses, worms, trojans, malware, and the like, transmitted through the communication network. As scanning content for malicious data within an application program or an application node hosted on the communication network may limit the performance of the application program, a server in a load balanced datacenter environment may host a malicious data scan as a service. Accordingly, the malicious data scan service may scale effectively to accommodate an increasing number of application nodes in the network, and by retrieving updated definitions of malicious data at suitable times, the server may identify malicious data with increasing reliability.